When the Wind is Southerly: Season 7
by MissBates
Summary: Continuation of When the Wind is Southerly:S6. Wilson and Cuddy are still keeping House in the dark about his condition, but is House as clueless as they think he is? Final chapter up.
1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note: **This is the continuation of _When the Wind is Southerly: Season 6_. If you haven't read that, you might want to start there, because Season 7 isn't comprehensible without prior knowledge of the havoc I've wrought with Season 6.

My thanks to _**Flywoman_returns**_ for suggestions and critique, to _**Brighid45**_ for encouragement and beta services and to the LJ _**Clinic Duty**_ community for providing episode transcripts.

* * *

**I: Now What?**

_In which Rachel plays a larger role (and sex a smaller one) than House (and smut-loving Huddies) would have liked._

When Wilson entered his condo at noon he made straight for the answering machine to check for messages. Nothing. He'd checked his cell phone for missed calls every half hour; Cuddy hadn't called since he'd hung up on her. As he stood in the middle of the condo wondering what to do, his cell phone rang. He pulled it out of the pocket, a weight lifting off his heart as he saw the caller ID.

"Cuddy? Thank God! ... Is House okay?"

Cuddy's voice was low, but without the tenseness that had characterised it eight hours earlier. "Yeah, he's fine. He slept for six hours. He's just making breakfast."

"Great. Great," Wilson said. Cuddy added nothing, so finally Wilson said, "Did he ...?"

"He didn't take anything. Not that it would have mattered - turns out the vicodin pills were breath mints."

"House was sitting there with breath mints?" Wilson didn't know whether to laugh or to cry.

"Seems Lucas found House's secret, secret, secret stash and thought it would be funny to replace the vicodin with breath mints."

"What a jerk! How did you explain that to House?"

"I spirited them away before he realised that they weren't vicodin." Before Wilson could comment on that Cuddy continued, "Listen, Wilson, I need your help. I have Rachel here. Can you come and pick her up?"

"Aren't you going to tell me what happened?"

"Nothing happened." She sounded impatient. "I went in there and told House that I had to re-bandage his wound. Then I got some painkillers and sedatives into him and put him to bed."

"You - sedated him."

"Yes."

Wilson wished he could see Cuddy's face. Come to think of it, he wished Cuddy could see his face. "Was that necessary? What if he'd had vicodin before you arrived? You could have killed him."

"Yes, it **was **necessary. He needed rest," Cuddy explained tersely. "Look, I really need you to get Rachel. He hasn't realised she's here and ..."

Wilson huffed in exasperation. "Cuddy, you may have got six hours of sleep, but I haven't. I've only just got home. House doesn't eat children, no matter what he says."

Cuddy's voice took on that tense quality again that it had had the night before. "When I said he doesn't 'realise' she's here, I meant just that. He's seen her sitting on the couch, he's heard her babbling to herself, but ... Look, when he heard her he said something about 'those damn mice in the kitchen'. You know how he is about animals. He could well brain her with a rolling pin and throw her in the trash."

Bending his head, Wilson drew a hand through his already messy hair. "Tell him you need to go in to work, take her and leave. From what you tell me he sounds as if he's fine now. I'll get on my way and take over from there - he won't be alone for more than fifteen minutes."

"I already tried that."

"He stopped you from leaving?" Wilson tried to picture House using physical violence on Cuddy, and failed.

"Not physically. ... He wants me to spend the day with him." She said the words as though they had some secret significance.

Wilson sprawled on the couch, massaging his forehead with his free hand. "Cuddy, I haven't slept in thirty-six hours. If there's some subtext here, I'm sorry, but I'm too tired to figure it out."

There was a longer silence. Then, "He ... he thinks we're in a relationship. I did what you told me to do; I told him I'd dumped Lucas."

"You slept with House," Wilson stated flatly.

"No! I told you - I sedated him. But he believes that we... that we had sex."

Wilson had never heard Cuddy stutter so much. Some of the tiredness lifted. "Wow! That might cause complications," he said, feeling glad that he wasn't in Cuddy's position.

"You're telling me!"

"You need to tell him."

"I **know**! But how the hell do I do that without him coming apart again? You should see him, Wilson. He's ... he's **smiling**. He's like a kid at Christmas opening up all his presents. What do you think will happen when I tell him he can't keep them?" Wilson preferred not to think about that. "I'm still trying to figure out how to let him down gently."

Wilson considered his options. "Okay, I guess I'm better off with Rachel than with House. I'll be there in about twenty minutes."

_Later:_

Cuddy wasn't taking her phone, House wasn't answering the door or his calls. Wilson prowled around the apartment, wondering when a neighbour would spot him and call the police. Finally his cell rang.

"Cuddy, what the hell is going on?"

"I'm sorry. I tried to talk him into letting you in, but he's worried about you, y'know, finding out about 'us'." There was a sound of running water; Wilson figured that Cuddy must be calling from the bathroom.

"Can you bring Rachel out?"

"I don't think so. He hardly leaves me for a minute. The best I can do is distract him while you get her. Don't you have a spare key? Oh, damn,** I've **got it, haven't I?"

Wilson remembered something from his endless rounds around the apartment block. "The kitchen window is open a few inches. I'll climb in through there. Where's Rachel?"

"On a blanket in the living room. I'll get House into the bedroom, then you can grab her and go out through the front door. You need her booster seat. My car key is in my bag, and that's lying on the floor next to the door. Thanks, Wilson."

"No problem," he said, mentally cursing both House and Cuddy.

"Oh, and Wilson? I didn't bring along enough diapers for Rachel, and she needs a change. Badly."

**

* * *

II: Selfish**

_Wherein it is shown that contrary to House's beliefs, neither video games nor rats are conducive to a successful courtship._

"So you decided to go public." Wilson loomed before Cuddy at the clinic desk.

Cuddy looked around quickly to make sure no one was within hearing before she returned to the file she was filling out. "**He **did. I had no interest in it, as you can imagine."

"But you've made it all official - a signed contract at HR, etcetera." Wilson oozed disapproval.

Cuddy looked up again, raising her eyebrows at him. "Did I ever insist that you sign contracts when you screwed any of the staff here?"

"No ... I ... it was never official ...I didn't date anyone, not really."

Cuddy snorted. "PPTH has no fraternisation policy," she said.

"We don't? Why not?"

"There is no sense in having rules if you can't enforce them."

"Then what were you doing in HR with House?" Wilson asked suspiciously.

Cuddy sighed and put her pen down. "I talked with legal a few days ago. He's been on leave for a year now - half a year as sick leave and the other half as a sabbatical that I talked HR into. He never took his vacations, so he has another three months of those. But in three months' time, if he still has no licence, I can't hold him any longer. HR will bring it up at the next board meeting."

"He has tenure. There'd have to be a unanimous vote to dismiss him," Wilson pointed out.

"Not if he doesn't have a licence. We haven't had a case like this before - a doctor with tenure but no licence - but apparently his contract expires automatically once his leave is over if the board doesn't vote to keep him on, and why should they? We're paying him a hefty salary for doing nothing. It's better to dissolve his contract before it expires, because it gives him the chance to bargain for a golden handshake."

Wilson pinched the bridge of his nose. "How did House take it?"

"I didn't tell him. I did the bargaining for him, so to say." Cuddy glanced around once again before admitting, "He thinks he signed a love contract."

"That's - I'm pretty sure that's fraudulent at best!"

Cuddy waved Wilson's indignation away. "He could have read what he was signing. He's not incapacitated and has the legal right to enter contracts. Wilson, it's what he would do if he knew of his state. He'd ruthlessly go for the best financial deal he could possibly get. I drove a hard bargain for him, so he's got a solid financial buffer for the future. Besides, there's no alternative." She turned back to her file with finality.

Wilson studied her for a moment, taking in her deliberately casual stance, the slight turn of her body away from him, the rather higher neckline than usual. "How's everything going with House?"

"Fine. He's happy, so I'm happy." Cuddy shrugged slightly, as though to indicate that a relationship with House was no big deal. "Besides, I now have an excuse to drop in on him - it'll be easier to keep an eye on him."

"Right. Ummm, how's the sex?" Cuddy snapped the file shut and turned around, leaning her back and both elbows on the clinic counter. She fixed Wilson with a hard stare. Wilson stuttered on valiantly, "I mean ... I've always wondered ... you know, with his leg ... it can't be easy... Sorry, I shouldn't have asked." He cast up both hands defensively.

"You're damn right! I don't have sex with House."

"Oh. Then what do you do?"

"Eat together, talk, play games." She smiled at his incredulous expression. "Yes, board games, video games - he enjoys that, and so do I. One can be in a relationship even if one isn't having sex." She considered that thought with a frown, and then she added, "Though I guess we aren't really in a relationship."

"Then what did that display in my office mean?"

Cuddy looked somewhat guilty for the first time. "House," she said hesitatingly, "hasn't realised that we aren't having sex. ... I sedated him that first day, then I had a 'stress headache', then I 'got my periods'. He believes we're in a conventional relationship."

"And you had to grab his crotch to reassure him," Wilson said austerely.

"**You **provoked that," Cuddy retaliated. "I gave him a perfectly chaste kiss on the lips, but you had to question everything. What was I supposed to do?"

"Did you have to grab his balls? A more passionate kiss would have convinced me. When he realises that you're leading him on, he's going to be that much more hurt."

"Because pawing his genitals is so much more intimate than a passionate kiss," Cuddy said sarcastically. "Honestly, Wilson, there's a reason why hookers will let their customers do anything but kiss them." She smiled at Wilson unpleasantly. "That's who you can ask, if you really want to know how he does it with his leg - one of his hookers."

"I've never met any of them. The only person I know who has had sex with House since the infarction is Stacy."

"You said they split up before the infarction. Oh, no, don't tell me she was with both of you at the same time after the infarction!" Cuddy looked revolted.

"No, no! She left before House was physically capable of more than working the remote control," Wilson hastened to explain. "But she slept with House when she was here with Mark."

"Nonsense!"

"Not so! He told me. It was after they came back from Baltimore. They got closer there in that snowstorm and then ..."

"Wilson," Cuddy said firmly, "Stacy didn't go to Baltimore with House. I wanted her to, but she refused. That's when I told her she needed to find another job, because I have no use for a lawyer who won't deal with House-related cases."

"Stacy didn't go to Baltimore with House?" Wilson repeated stupidly.

"No. There was an incident the week before. House had broken into Stacy and Mark's place while Stacy was at work and Mark in physio. What he didn't know when he planned his heist was that the exterminator would be there. Stacy got home to find a dead rat, a hysterical exterminator, two police officers, a very suspicious Mark and a completely unrepentant House. It took her ages to calm down the exterminator, get Mark to drop charges against House, pacify the police and get rid of House. When I mentioned accompanying House to Baltimore she hit the ceiling, and I can't blame her."

"Oh." Leaning against the counter next to Cuddy, Wilson scratched the back of his head. "He was convinced that she loved him."

"He didn't stand a chance. Stacy was relaxed and comfortable with Mark, not tense and wound-up the way she was when she and House were living together." A thought struck Cuddy. "Wilson, he believes **now **that Stacy slept with him, or did he believe it then already?"

"Then." They looked at each other.

"You're sure he wasn't jerking you around."

"Yes."

"There was no reason for him to hallucinate that."

"Reason? Does anything House hallucinate have a reason?" Wilson spat.

"Yes! As you told me hardly a year ago, everything House hallucinates has a reason and an explanation. When Stacy returned with Mark, the infarction lay five years back and he'd had no major physical trauma. His vicodin intake was high, but not completely out of control."

"Stacy's return could be considered mental trauma," Wilson interjected weakly.

"So can anything and everything that House puts himself through on a daily basis: firing diverse members of his team; allowing patients to assault him; giving himself migraines; hell, sticking knives into outlets. There's no end to it. For all we know he's been hallucinating non-stop ever since the infarction. We have no idea whether his reality coincides with ours or not!"

"That," said Wilson heavily, "explains a lot of things."

**

* * *

III: Unwritten**

_Gives the Reader insights into how the plots of modern bestselling novels (and possibly even television shows) are developed._

Wilson's shadow darkened the door of Cuddy's office. Hardly glancing at him as she sorted through a pile of papers she asked, "Has House ever given you a present?"

"Umm, no. Why?" Wilson carefully closed the door behind him.

"Are you sure?" Cuddy persisted.

"Pretty much. I'd have declared a House-is-Human Commemoration Day to mark the occasion."

"Hmmm." Cuddy stared thoughtfully into space.

"What?" Wilson asked despite himself as he lowered himself onto the visitor's chair without awaiting her invitation.

"He says he gave me a couple of books a few years ago."

"He gave you a book as a housewarming gift a few weeks ago," he pointed out.

Cuddy shook her head. "No, he doesn't mean that one. I'm sure I never got a present from House before that."

"Just go along with it," Wilson advised. "Pretend that you've read them. He's in love with you and he believes he did things for you; he'll be hurt if you don't give his 'gifts' the attention they deserve." When Cuddy nodded, he continued, "We need to talk."

"About House?"

"About your budget proposal for the upcoming board meeting." Wilson placed a print-out of the offending article on Cuddy's desk. "I noticed that you want to double the PR budget."

Cuddy stiffened, smiling her administrator's smile. "Yes."

"And that you've reduced the oncology budget by exactly the same amount."

"Yes." The smile became toothier.

"Shouldn't you keep our private issues out of our professional dealings?" Wilson suggested gently.

"I have no **private **issues with you." Cuddy waved a hand at him. "My head of oncology caused the biggest PR disaster in the history of this hospital, so his department will bear the brunt of the campaign I'm initiating to mitigate its effect. And **you **will support my budget proposal at the next board meeting or God help your soul!"

"I ... haven't done anything! Okay, I urged you to get involved with House, but it wasn't **my **idea that you go public or advertise your relationship all over the hospital. It isn't that big a deal, anyway - people have been speculating for years."

"I am not so narcissistic as to believe that the news of our relationship constitutes a PR disaster. I'm talking about Alice Tanner."

Wilson looked relieved. "Oh, that! That's nothing. Diagnostics didn't have a case, and House adores her books."

"So I gathered. You thought you'd keep House busy and amused." Cuddy's tone was not amused.

"Yes. You," Wilson pointed an accusing finger at Cuddy, "said you didn't want him in your bed, and the best way to keep House out of it is to keep him occupied. When he's on a case he isn't interested in sex. If you've changed your mind about the sex, then I'm sorry." He looked utterly unrepentant.

"I haven't. Nevertheless, having Alice Tanner in my hospital is not a Good Idea."

"She isn't Alice Tanner. She's an actress whom I paid to impersonate her," Wilson said smugly.

"I know. I happen to have met the real Alice Tanner."

"Really!" Wilson looked impressed. "You should have brought House a signed copy - he'd have been thrilled."

"He was with me, actually." Cuddy leaned back, crossing her arms in front of her chest. "Two nights ago, when we broke into her house: the **real **Alice Tanner's house, where we were discovered by the **real **Alice Tanner who nearly brained us with a **real **baseball bat."

"House said her housekeeper came in and ... oh!"

"The next time you choose a figure of public prominence to keep House occupied, take someone who resides on the West Coast. Or better still, in Siberia. I persuaded her not to call the police or to have House prosecuted for stealing her property, but I had to make some major concessions." Wilson massaged the back of his neck. "Since House now knows the plot of her next novel and could leak it, she's having to re-write it. A major portion will be set in a hospital, a small, well-endowed East Coast teaching hospital. I have agreed to give her access to all our facilities and to instruct my staff to give her any medical or non-medical background knowledge that she may need."

Wilson grasped at the straw. "That's ... good publicity for us. She's bound to thank us in her acknowledgements."

"Furthermore," Cuddy leaned forward, chin propped on one hand, "I have given her my assurance in writing that neither PPTH as an institution nor any individuals working for PPTH will sue her or apply for prior restraint."

"We'd want to do that because?"

"Because the revised plot revolves around children being misused for illegal medical trials by diabolical Dr Leah Catty, who is supported by brilliant, but physically and emotionally crippled Dr Gary Horse."

"Ah, a _roman a clef_," Wilson said weakly.

"I'm glad we've got the semantics sorted."

Wilson decided on a change of topic. "What publicity measures were you thinking of?"

"The book is due to be published in the fall of this year. I've scheduled a poster campaign in January, a series of public lectures through spring, and a career day in late summer for the age group most likely to read Tanner's book."

"Sounds good."

"So I have your support," Cuddy stated.

"Naturally." Wilson shrugged in resignation as he got up and turned to go.

"Oh, and Wilson?"

"Yes?" He turned at the door.

Cuddy's smile was shark-like once again. "I suggested a slight plot modification to Ms Tanner: the real villain of the story is an oncologist under whose unassuming, charming exterior lurks the mastermind of the crime. Catty and Horse are merely his puppets, made amenable to his will by blackmail and drugs. She was very grateful for my contribution."

**

* * *

IV: Massage Therapy, Unplanned Parenthood**

_Explains Cuddy's dislike for go-kart racing and Rachel's obsession with moose. The Reader is once more reminded that a good reputation, like a woman's virtue, is easily destroyed but difficult to restore._

The door to Wilson's office banged open, but it wasn't House. It was Cuddy, emitting steam from every possible orifice in her head.

"Did **you **give House relationship advice?"

Wilson jumped. "I ... what ..."

"Did you tell him to give in on the massage therapist?" Cuddy was poised ominously in front of his desk.

"I ... may have suggested that it would be a reasonable move for a boyfriend to ..." Wilson raised his hands as though to placate her.

"You moron!"

"You want your boyfriend to be massaged by a hooker he used to have sex with?"

"He's not my boyfriend, she isn't a hooker, and he never had sex with her."

Wilson tipped his head to the side. "Are we talking about the same two people here?"

Cuddy flopped down in the visitor's chair. "The woman who is massaging House is young, reasonably attractive **and **a legit physiotherapist and masseuse. She is not a hooker, and I doubt she's dumb enough to have sex with a client."

"Then why are you upset at House getting massaged by her?"

"You told me I can't dump House because he'll go on a bender. I agree. But keeping him at a distance is getting complicated. There are just so many migraines, periods and visits from my mom that I can use as a pretext." Cuddy brought her fingertips to her forehead for a moment.

"You've - managed to keep him from ... He sounded as though you two have been, you know, ..." Wilson flushed.

"No, we haven't. He doesn't know, though. When I can't avoid it we play video games or watch movies in bed till he falls asleep. Afterwards I pretend we've had sex."

"And he buys that?"

"He's given me a few odd looks, but what guy doubts his abilities if his gal expresses satisfaction? Still, I can't keep this up forever. It's just a question of time before he decides he wants sex **before **the video games, so if I can't dump him then he has to dump me."

"That ... could work." Wilson scrunched up his face.

"It had better. I've yelled at him at work, instigated PDAs in front of his fellows, rubbed in how few common interests we have, pretended to hate go-karts ..."

"You **like **go-karts?"

"Everyone loves go-kart racing."

"You had me fooled."

"That was the idea, right? Anyway, when I saw the massage therapist I had this idea that I'd pretend to be jealous of her. He'd find that ridiculous, causing the situation to escalate. And while it escalated, I'd have an excuse to avoid sex."

"Well, it worked, didn't it?" Wilson pointed out.

"Yes, but not the way I intended. Me being jealous of a perfectly respectable massage therapist is so corny that he'd be right not to give in and fire her. He can't very well avoid every woman under the age of sixty-five just to keep me pacified. But I'd hardly got round to saying that she looked slutty when **he** volunteered that she was a hooker with whom he used to have sex."

"You're sure she isn't?"

"I'm sure. She's perfectly respectable."

Wilson cast around for an explanation and came up with, "His mind is making something up to make your reaction to his therapist seem reasonable, so that he doesn't have to dump you."

Cuddy gave an exasperated huff. "Look, I don't pretend to understand how his mind works. All I know is that although his subconscious may be suggesting that he doesn't want to break up with me, his jackass conscious was still strong enough not to give in as a matter of principle. Not until his meddling friend gave him totally crappy advice." Wilson looked guilty. "Now he doesn't have a massage therapist and I have to find him a new one. In addition, he's figured out that I've been keeping him away from Rachel. I've had to ask him over."

"Having him over could make it easier for you. Checking on him regularly costs you a lot of time, time away from Rachel."

"Rachel always gave me an excuse not to spend the night. How do I stop him from staying over if he comes to my place?"

"Cook healthy, make sure he doesn't get hold of the remote control, and ..." Wilson paused, giving Cuddy a calculating look.

"And?" Cuddy prompted.

"Make him look after Rachel. I'm sure she's a sweet kid, Cuddy, but House is petrified of her."

"There's no way he's looking after Rachel! Don't look like that - he's delusional. I can't let him look after my daughter."

"You let him run around the hospital," Wilson hastened to point out.

"Accompanied by a professional team of babysitters."

"I'll keep an eye on him."

"Wilson, if you offer to help him, he'll make you do the work and then call in sexual favours from me. It's a win-win for him that sort of defeats my purpose."

Wilson couldn't refute the logic of Cuddy's argument. "What if I watch through the windows?"

"What if House catches you at it?"

"Not if I stay outside Rachel's window. That way she's supervised and House is unlikely to see me. You go and coerce him into babysitting Rachel. I'll take care of the rest."

_The next morning:_

Wilson had barely hung up his overcoat when his office door opened and Cuddy poked her head in. She looked sleep deprived and stressed.

"Wilson, what is going on? I couldn't get rid of House last night, and he kept hopping in and out of bed like a flaming jack-in-the-box. The only upside was that he was too rattled to think of feeling me up."

"Relax. Everything is under control. House is on edge because he thinks Rachel swallowed a dime. I've convinced him it's a dire medical emergency."

Wilson's words did nothing to reassure Cuddy. "Rachel swallowed a dime? Why the hell ..."

"She **didn't **swallow a dime," Wilson clarified. "But she woke up around nine-ish, so House called me to support him. It seemed an ideal opportunity to rub in the downsides of dating a woman with a kid, so I, ah, made a dime disappear."

"He didn't say anything about the dime," Cuddy said, eyeing Wilson suspiciously.

"No, he's hoping it'll turn up. He's doing an ultrasound at the moment to trace its path through her intestines."

"Are you crazy? You're letting House carry out unnecessary medical procedures on my daughter?"

"It's only an ultrasound," Wilson hastened to pacify Cuddy.

"He'll be doing exploratory surgery in no time. Go to him and stop him before I do exploratory surgery on you without the benefit of anesthetics!"

As he took his lab coat, Wilson put a calming hand on Cuddy's arm. "Don't worry, Cuddy. House has no desire whatsoever to do anything to Rachel that might piss you off. The next time you change her diaper, pretend to find a dime in it."

Cuddy still looked worried as she allowed Wilson to propel her towards the door. "Are you sure House didn't give anything to Rachel - laxatives, sedatives, I-don't-know? She was decidedly odd this morning. I could hardly get her away from her bedroom window; she insisted there was a moose out there. I hope she doesn't have nightmares the next few nights."

"Lots of imagination, that kid," Wilson said, glancing at the moose cap hanging next to his coat before he quickly shut the door behind them.


	2. Chapter 2

Author's Note: Many thanks to Flywoman_Returns and to Brighid45 for providing encouragement and corrections. I can recommend Flywoman's latest, _Bombed_, a really funny read.

* * *

**V: Office Politics**

_Treats of the infamous conduct of James E. Wilson towards his friend Gregory House that he artfully disguises as an act of friendship towards his superior._

"You're inflicting Martha M. Masters on him?" They had resurrected their weekly lunch dates, the 'PPTH Superpower Summit', as House liked to call it, in the days after the Trenton crane disaster. In the first weeks they'd started off with inconsequential chit-chat, but of late they'd dropped the pretence that their lunch dates were about anything other than House. Nonetheless, by beginning the conversation in the cafeteria queue before they even had a chance to sit down, Wilson was transgressing against an unspoken rule.

Cuddy gave him a sharp glance before she returned her attention to the weighty question of frozen yogurt with or without sprinkles. "Mmmm."

"That isn't very nice of you." Wilson, who had taken two ice-cream bars, replaced one of them. House had the tact to stay well clear of them on 'summit' days, but Wilson's habit of grabbing double the amount of junk food he needed was ingrained.

"Being nice isn't part of my job description," Cuddy pointed out as she picked up her tray and turned towards her favourite table.

"But throwing that girl to the lions? What do you hope to achieve? House will eat her for lunch and toss the bones to his fellows."

Cuddy stopped so abruptly that Wilson nearly ran into her. She whirled around, her bottle of water tipping over on her tray. "Are you offering Masters a rotation in oncology?"

"Who ... no ... I mean, I already have two students."

"You couldn't take a third?"

"Masters is ... she has ... I don't think she'd fit in the team," Wilson improvised.

"And could you name a department where she'd fit?" Cuddy asked. Wilson gaped at her. "No? Exactly."

Cuddy sat down and waited until Wilson did the same. "Masters is one of our students, so we are obliged to offer her the rotations she needs to complete her degree. The departments that offer compulsory rotations have no choice in the matter, but no other department head will take her on voluntarily. There's only one department whose head won't deny me a favour." She propped her chin in her hand and smiled at Wilson from under her lashes.

"So you're using your relationship to foster this ... this nightmare on House? He'll fire her within a week."

"Oh, he fires her about three times a day. Wilson, use your brains! It's a win-win whichever way it goes. If House keeps her, Masters gets to complete her optional rotations while we have someone to keep an eye on House. It's a lot cheaper than using a fellow as a babysitter. If he fires her, I have an excuse to get mad at him again."

Wilson knitted his eyebrows. "Does Masters know that she's your watchdog?"

"Oh, no! She's a natural. During her other rotations I had her in my office every other day reporting irregularities. She even managed to dish up stuff about Chan, whose department is the only one that passes all inspections with flying colours."

"Clever," Wilson conceded, ignoring the slur on the oncology department which would also pass any inspection, even the surprise ones, if its head didn't have a moral responsibility towards a certain ex-diagnostician who occasionally made him transgress a rule or two.

"Yes. I admit I'm seeing a lot more of Masters than I'd like, but I guess it can't be helped."

"So you're aware of House's treatment plan for Dugan?" Wilson asked slowly.

"Hep A to combat Hep C? Yes, Masters ratted on him. That was unfortunate, but I'm sure House will get a handle on the situation. I just need a positive Hep C test from him." Cuddy waved the matter away with a flick of her wrist.

"Look, I don't know what he's planning, but he's going to lie to you. Keep an eye on him."

Cuddy put down her fork and stared at Wilson, her expression sombre. "Why are _you _dishing out the dirt on your friend? You're doing neither of us a favour."

"Odd," Wilson dead-panned, "I was under the impression that I was helping you."

Cuddy's voice rose. "By telling me to stop House from doing whatever it is he needs to do?"

"That's not what I said. You want House to break up with you, right?"

"Yes, but not at the cost of a patient's life!"

Wilson shrugged. "Call him on the lie when he's cured the patient."

"And that is _so _going to impress him!" Cuddy snorted.

"He is convinced that as his girlfriend you will _not _forgive him the lie."

"He's - what?" Cuddy looked completely puzzled. "What crap! I _want _him to lie, and he knows it. That's how we work: I officially forbid him to carry out some insane procedure; he lies to me about it, but carries it through nonetheless; I pretend to believe that he's obeying my orders until he comes in, gloating, to tell me he's saved the patient. Then I pretend to get mad. (Well, sometimes I skip that step and admit immediately that he was right.) It's our mutual contribution to protecting the hospital while saving the patient."

"Not this time," Wilson said smugly. "This time he's convinced that you expect him to respect your wishes."

"What did you tell him?"

"Who, me? Nothing." Wilson did a reasonable imitation of House's hurt puppy look. "He came to me asking how you'd react to a lie. I told him that he knew how that would go. I let him work out all the answers by himself."

Cuddy shook her head. "I still don't see how this will work. Either I yell at him, he yells at me, and afterwards everything is fine again, or I tell him it's over, which is what I thought we were trying to avoid at all costs."

"You forgot option number three. Tell him he has to apologise."

Cuddy laughed bitterly. "He's never going to ..." A look of comprehension spread across her face, followed by an appreciative smile. "Oh, you manipulative bastard!"

"I'll take that as a compliment."

* * *

**VI: A Pox on Our House**

_Gives credit where credit is due, namely to Grandma House, for the timely diagnosis of a rare condition, and allows the Reader insight into the true motives behind Wilson's ill-fated proposal to his ex-wife Sam._

The door to Cuddy's office swung open, its impetus sending it crashing against the wall. Cuddy's head jerked up. It wasn't who she expected, given the dramatic entry. It was Wilson who marched up to her, finger pointing at her in accusation.

"Seriously, Cuddy? He was in danger of dying of smallpox, but not only are you continuing this ridiculous quarrel over lying. No, you didn't even have the decency to stay with him!"

Cuddy straightened, putting her pen down carefully. "A, kicking up a fuss about him lying to me was _your _idea. B, he was in no danger of dying because it was rickettsialpox, which are harmless and have never been known to cause death, ..."

"You didn't know that," Wilson yelled, leaning on the desk with both hands to tower over her.

Cuddy pushed back her chair to reduce the discrepancy in height. "Not at the beginning. I knew it by the time I left him to stew by himself."

"You knew, and you didn't tell him? You left him there for another hour thinking he was going to die? If your paperwork was so important, you could have called me and _I _would have sat with him."

"C, he knew _all along _it was rickettsialpox and that there wasn't the slightest danger of his dying," Cuddy continued undeterred, "which was, D, why he didn't want you down there, because you would probably have figured it out much quicker than I did, and spoilt his fun."

Now it was Cuddy's turn to raise her voice. "I am so mad at him that if he doesn't dump me, I swear I will dump him, melt-down or not! Do you have any idea what I went through when I thought he was gonna catch smallpox? Any idea at all?" She got up and turned away, ostensibly examining the bleak view from her window. When she spoke again her voice was coated. "And then I find out he's screwing with my mind! He's lucky his balls are still intact."

"He ... knew it was rickettsialpox all along? No! He'd never have let the father die if he'd known."

Cuddy turned round, collected again. "By the time he'd figured it out the father couldn't be saved any more. His immune system was shot thanks to the kidney cancer. The daughter was never in any danger. There are no known fatal outcomes caused by the disease alone."

"Are you sure he knew it was r-pox?"

"Absolutely."

"How'd you figure it out?"

Cuddy touched her forehead with her fingers in a gesture indicating self-reproach. "I should have noticed much, much earlier that something was off - when he went into the isolation room without a suit, and suddenly everyone went,_ 'Oh, it's smallpox after all!', _but no one from his team seriously tried to find an alternate diagnosis. They just stood around saying, '_You shouldn't have gone in there, you seriously screwed it up, House_.'" Cuddy's tone mock-imitated Foreman before returning to her normal diction. "All except for Masters, who wasn't in the know."

"His team knew?" Wilson said incredulously.

"Yes. They'll all deny it, of course, as will House if you ask him, but I'm not a total idiot. When Broda refused to move House to another isolation room I called the team into my office to figure out how we could kidnap House to get him out of there, and then it became clear that they weren't interested in helping to move him. They said it might cost them their licences. I mean, seriously, taking the high moral ground when it comes to duping the CDC - does that sound like House's team? Now I know that House isn't exactly your boss-of-the-year, but normally even Foreman musters some compassion for him. I finally smelled a rat when Chase offered to go to the chapel to pray for House."

"You're basing your assumption that House pulled off an elaborate stunt to jerk you around on the fact that Chase wanted to pray for House? That's paranoid," Wilson stated.

Cuddy rolled her eyes. "If I'm paranoid then it's not the _cause _of any delusions about being screwed over by House, but the _result _of being screwed over by House. No, that was just the beginning of my suspicions. I took Masters aside and asked her how they'd come to their diagnosis. Turns out they had an old Dutch ship log that House got translated - not by our translation service, but by an online hooker from Amsterdam."

"That sounds like House."

"Oh, yes, if we're talking about causing the hospital a horrendous bill for x-rated services that I'll have to justify to Accounting, but not if we're talking about a patient's life. There's no way House would use a person who has no knowledge of medicine and whose native language isn't English, not unless he knew beforehand what was in that log. So I searched his desk and found this." Cuddy pulled a computer print-out out of her desk drawer and handed it to Wilson, who finally lowered himself into the chair in front of her desk.

After glancing at the first page Wilson returned his gaze to Cuddy, puzzled. "That's ... Dutch."

"Yes, it's a second copy of the ship's log," Cuddy confirmed.

"So how is that supposed to have helped him? It's still Dutch!" Wilson reiterated.

"Turn a few pages on," Cuddy instructed, rolling one hand in illustration.

Wilson turned a few pages, first slowly, then faster when he failed to find anything of interest. Suddenly he stopped dead. On the sixth page of the print-out a few paragraphs had been underlined by hand. The word _kater _had been highlighted. Wilson frowned at the log while Cuddy smiled grimly. Wilson turned over a few more pages until he came to one that not only had several paragraphs underlined, but also a few notes in the margin. The notes were in House's handwriting. One said, _'R-pox?_'

Wilson sighed. "So House knows Dutch."

"His grandmother was Dutch."

"He ... told you that?"

"He made some unbelievable cookies the other day, called bokky-somethings - a Dutch term for goat's feet. He knew them from his childhood when his grandmother used to bake them for him."

"He baked cookies for you." Wilson's expression was somewhere between 'pigs can fly' and 'he's never baked any for me!'

"For Rachel, actually," Cuddy corrected, as though that would soften the blow. "She wanted to bake something, and I couldn't be bothered."

Wilson's mien tipped unmistakeably towards 'he's never baked for me', so Cuddy continued hastily, "The point is, House read the log _before _he put the online hooker on it, so he knew that the patients had r-pox. Masters and I figured out that _kater _might be cat, so I sent her back to the hooker while I got our translation service onto this. I must admit that the hooker was quicker."

"Geez. I guess he's lucky you didn't eviscerate him on the spot."

"Too busy dealing with Broda. He wants to file a complaint against House for disregarding his instructions and putting the hospital at risk of contamination."

Wilson pointed a finger, this time a knowing one, at Cuddy. "You want to kill House, and yet you're protecting him against Broda."

"I'm not protecting House, I'm protecting my own ass here. What do you think will happen if Broda finds out that he can't file a complaint against the jackass doctor who jerked him around because that jackass happens not to be a real doctor?" Cuddy marched to and fro, gesticulating as she went. "I'm done with House! I had a near heart-attack, I had to leave Rachel at my mother's mercy last night, which means she'll be unbearable tonight, and now I'm sitting on a pile of paperwork that'll explode in my face if I can't get Broda off my back."

Wilson massaged his brow. "Ummm, give me some time to 'get rid' of Sam. If you toss him out while he thinks Sam's still living with me, he won't accept my help."

"Good luck to you," Cuddy snorted, adding as an afterthought, "I thought House isn't letting you and Sam 'break up'?"

"Gotta think of something he'll accept as a valid reason."

"Marry her. Marriage has always been a death knell to your relationships."

"Nice. But no thanks. I can't face another of House's bachelor parties." Wilson frowned in concentration. "Come to think of it, that's not a bad idea."

Cuddy raised her eyebrows. "A bachelor party?"

"No. Heavens, no!" Wilson shuddered. "But a _proposal _might do the job. Or a pregnancy. Give me a few weeks."

"_One _week."

"Done!"

* * *

**VII: Small Sacrifices**

_In which a Secret of Cuddy's is revealed that will hopefully surprise the Reader as much as it did Wilson (and the unsuspecting Author of this Work)._

When Wilson came out of 221B, Baker Street, Cuddy was ascending the steps to the house. Tipping her a polite salute with two fingers, he passed her briskly on the steps. He'd almost made it when her voice cut through the evening air. "Where do _you _think you're going?"

Wilson turned around reluctantly. "He tossed me out. Said you were dropping by."

"Well, yes. He apologised," Cuddy explained. She tipped her head as she regarded Wilson. "Weren't you supposed to get dumped today?"

"I got dumped today, most painfully and ignobly."

Cuddy worried her bottom lip with her teeth. "Doesn't he normally offer comfort and couch when your relationships disintegrate?"

"This time House is adamant: booty beats beer." Wilson shrugged, seemingly indifferent to House's priorities.

"I can't believe he won't let you stay." She sank down on the top step and patted the spot beside her. Wilson sat down gingerly. Cuddy leaned her forehead on both hands. "And I can't believe he apologised. He'd even prepared a trite little speech on how he needed to take a leap of faith and show more trust. ... Hang on, did **you **tell him to apologise?"

"Well, yes," Wilson admitted sheepishly, "but you know he never takes my advice. He hears what he wants to hear. Apologising does not belong in that category. Usually, good sensible advice makes him go and do something really, really stupid. Or insane. Or both. I was kind of banking on that happening."

"Making promises he can't possibly keep belongs somewhere in there, I'm sure," Cuddy conceded.

"Will you dump him?"

Cuddy sighed. "I should, I suppose. I just don't know how."

"Last week you were adamant about dumping him."

"I know. I ... freaked last week. He's a jerk and I want him to suffer for what he did to me there, but I don't want to set him back again." Cuddy pushed a stray strand of hair back. "I guess I'm in for another evening of Scrabble or Savagescape 2. We're stuck on level four with a horde of zombies. No matter what we do, they just get up again and keep going till we're flattened."

"You need an axe to kill zombies," Wilson said, as though stating the obvious.

"Really?" Cuddy turned her head to look at Wilson in surprise. "You play Savagescape, too?"

"No. This is wisdom acquired from years of watching zombie movies with House. You have to lob off their heads." Wilson frowned. "House should know that."

"House has been trying everything _except _axes on them," Cuddy said. "He's jerking me around again, damn him!"

"That doesn't make sense."

"Makes perfect sense to me. He gets to watch the zombies feast on my avatar twenty times in a row - I'm always the first one to go down. Besides, he knows how much I hate losing."

"Yes, but the longer you play, the longer he has to wait to get laid," Wilson objected. He raised his hands defensively when Cuddy rolled her eyes at him. "Yes, I know he won't get laid anyway, but _he _doesn't. ... How come you're so uptight about sleeping with him?"

"Why are you so interested in my sex life?" Cuddy countered. She added shrewdly, "Or is it _his _sex life you're interested in?"

"It isn't your sex life I'm interested in, it's your _lack _of one. You and House have been circling around each another for years. Finally, those circles get tight enough that you collide, and you chicken out. Why?"

Cuddy picked a piece of lint off her sleeve. "He's sick! It would be ..."

"I'm impressed by your impeccable moral stance, but what difference does it make?"

"When he stops hallucinating and figures out that I got him involved in a real relationship knowing that he wasn't in his right mind, he won't like it."

"Why not? _If _he ever stops hallucinating, he'll just go from a relationship that includes hallucinatory phases to one that doesn't." When Cuddy didn't respond, Wilson slammed his hands onto his knees impatiently. "Oh, come on! He's wanted this for ages."

"No, he hasn't," Cuddy snapped. "House has always avoided involvement. He's only interested in something more intimate than our workplace relationship when he's hallucinating."

"_You're _assuming a connection between his delusions and his desire for intimacy. _I'm _convinced that he's always wanted this. His delusions don't change his attitude; they simply reduce his inhibitions. You know, he has always been interested, but he's actually a bit shy."

"I must have missed that," Cuddy said with heavy irony.

"All of those dates of yours that he sabotaged?" Wilson prodded.

"Dates?" Cuddy face was one big question mark.

"Yeah, like the one with the guy who owns Eastern Lube."

"I haven't been on a date since I became dean," Cuddy said shortly.

Wilson digested this. Then he said, "_We've_ been on a couple of dates."

Cuddy patted Wilson's arm, smiling at him compassionately. "Those weren't dates, James."

"I thought not," Wilson admitted with a sigh. Then he mustered her curiously. "You haven't been on a date since you became dean? Why not?"

Cuddy shrugged, returning her attention to the non-existent lint on her sleeve.

"Anything to do with House?" Wilson queried.

"Not really."

"Well, _he _has had a soft spot for you ever since you slept with him all those years ago."

Cuddy fixed Wilson with a basilisk stare. "I don't care what House told you, but I have never had sex with That Man."

"He seems very convinced of it."

"Wilson, you _know _he's been hallucinating!"

"He said you met in med school," Wilson continued undeterred.

Cuddy snorted. "In med school! Yes, we were at Michigan at the same time, but I was first year pre-med and House must have been in his third or last year of med school."

"You weren't in the same endocrinology class? He didn't cheat off you in the exam?"

"I probably could have talked the professors into letting me audit med classes, but it would have been a complete waste of time for me. House calls me an over-achiever, but not even I audited advanced med courses in my first year of pre-med. Even if I had, there's no way I would have been allowed to sit for the exam. Only _bona fide _med students may take medical exams."

"He didn't follow you to a dance and then, ummm, ... ?" Wilson rolled a hand suggestively.

"Wilson, it didn't happen!"

"So you never met at med school." Cuddy was silent. "You did meet at med school!" Wilson crowed.

Cuddy brushed a hand through her hair and twisted one of her locks. Finally she said, "I tracked him down at that dance. I'd heard of him and I wanted to see this lunatic everyone was talking about, so I went there with a friend." She hesitated again.

"And you danced with House."

"No. I danced with my friend."

When it seemed as though Cuddy would add nothing more, Wilson prodded, "And?"

At the rate that Cuddy was picking at her sleeve, there wouldn't be much left of it soon. When she spoke again, it was in a low, rapid tone. "We were both pretty wasted, otherwise we'd never have done it. We were usually careful, but everyone seemed so liberal and open. We were idiots." She looked at Wilson from the side. His eyes were narrowed in confusion. Cuddy expelled a long breath before she explained, "I danced with my _**girl**_-friend."

Wilson's chin dropped.

"Yes, I bat for the other side. When we went outside for some fresh air some frat boys cornered us. They said they'd knock our queer ways out of us and show us how to be real women. They ... would have done it if House hadn't turned up and stopped them."

"House took on a group of frat boys single-handedly?"

Now that Wilson was focusing on House once more, Cuddy's narrative gained confidence. "Not so much 'took on' as 'got taken on'. He provoked them until they left off us. We managed to get away while they beat him to a pulp, so we hid and waited until they went inside again. As my dorm was close by we took him there - luckily he could still walk - to patch him up. I cleaned him up and let him crash on my couch. When I woke the next morning he was gone."

"And your girlfriend with him," Wilson surmised wryly.

"What? No! She left when we got to the dorm, because she couldn't take him anymore. He was his charming self then already - even with both eyes swelling shut, lip split and blood dripping from his nose - asking whether we'd do a threesome or whether we'd let him watch some girl-on-girl action, so by the time we reached the dorm my girlfriend was ready to cut his balls off and stew them for a midnight snack."

"But _you _didn't mind."

"He wasn't as good yet at that deflecting thing as he is now; I noticed right away that he only got obnoxious when we thanked him. My girlfriend was the touchy type; she didn't get him."

"And here I've been trying to drive you into House's arms. I feel like a complete idiot!" Wilson massaged the back of his neck, not quite meeting Cuddy's eyes.

"Don't." Cuddy put a hand on his arm again. "Ever since I got the job here I've been very discreet."

"Is that really necessary? I know it's still not a piece of cake, but this is not the Bible Belt. People here accept different lifestyles nowadays."

"Today's donors and board members were yesterday's frat boys," Cuddy said without rancour. "Oh, they'll all pretend to be open about it - maybe they even believe they are - but the moment I pull any sort of stunt like the deal with AtlanticNet I'll be out faster than I can say Jill Robinson. To be honest, none of my relationships have ever lasted long enough to make it worthwhile facing disadvantages because of them."

"Did House _blackmail _you into giving him the job?" Wilson asked.

"No. He didn't even recognise me when he came for the interview, and he only recalled the incident when I reminded him of it by thanking him again. If anything, my gratitude tipped the scales in his favour. But to be honest, there were enough other good reasons for employing him."

"And enough good ones not to."

"Okay, I may have been nostalgic enough to overlook one or two of those," Cuddy admitted.

"You employed House although he knew about your sexual preferences and could have told the whole world?"

"He never did, did he? He didn't even tell _you_!" Cuddy pointed out, not without a hint of _schadenfreude_.

"But you couldn't know that. He can be a jackass and he isn't exactly discreet."

Cuddy shrugged. "It was a gamble and it paid off. But House is trustworthy. He keeps his mouth shut when it matters. His 'seeming' indiscretions are planned meticulously. He never told you about my IVF either, did he?"

"You had IVF?"

"See?"

"And all that tension between both of you, the flirting, his crude comments, your teasing?" Wilson was looking lost, rather like a little boy whose street friends have just bust the myth of the stork, telling him where he really came from.

"I like House. I like bantering with him. He's witty, he's clever, he's funny. And he was the one man who knew I didn't mean anything when I flirted with him - if I did that with any other guys, they'd be all over me. It was the same for House - he knew I'd never be interested, no matter how hard he hit on me. It was a win-win for both of us - until he lost touch with reality."

"Well, he must have lost touch with reality long ago, because he told me _his _version of the Michigan story when I came down for my job interview. We went to a bar afterwards and had a few drinks. That's when he told me."

"Great!" Cuddy got up, smoothing down her skirt. Wilson followed suit. "My most troublesome doctor telling future employees that he slept with his boss. That's exactly what I need to enhance my reputation. And you," she poked an accusing finger into Wilson's chest, "believed him."

"I'm pretty sure he believed it himself. It's possible that he's kept his mouth shut all these years because he only remembers _his _version of your Michigan night."

Cuddy thought about this. "No ... no. During his job interview, when I thanked him again, he remembered some details of that night, and every now and then he refers to my sexual orientation. If you ask me, he only employed Dr Hadley so that he could indulge in fantasies about us getting off together," she joked. Wilson's sombre expression, however, drew her up short. A moment later, her smile faded too. "Your job interview was _before _the infarction."

"Yes."

"Oh, crap!"

"Absolutely."

* * *

**VIII: Larger Than Life**

_Showing the truth of the old biblical wisdom that: Whoso diggeth a pit shall fall therein: and he that rolleth a stone, it will return upon him. [Proverbs 26, 27]_

Giving his watch a quick check, Wilson exited the elevator and headed towards the hospital entrance. He stopped and turned when he heard the tap of brisk heels behind him, and quirked an enquiring eyebrow at Cuddy.

"Need me?"

"Yes."

"Will it take long? It's bowling night."

"House'll be late anyway, and I won't take a minute." Cuddy gestured towards the entrance, falling into step beside Wilson as they reached the doors. "House says you want him to attend some film festival with him on Thursday. I'm sorry, but he isn't going."

"Look, _I _don't care. A patient gave me the tickets, but I'd as soon not go," Wilson said sincerely. "It's House who's insisting on going."

"That's good, because you're coming to my place," Cuddy decreed.

"I ... am?"

"Yes. It's my birthday."

Wilson was all affability. "Of course. I'll be happy to ..."

"Dinner with my mom."

Wilson's face fell. "Ah. Yes. But I did promise House I'd take him to the film festival ..."

Cuddy stopped short, facing Wilson. "This isn't up for debate. I have expended a lot of energy on setting this up, and if you don't help me House won't show."

"You're _precipitating _a meeting between your mother and House? You're provoking Momageddon."

Cuddy started off again, making Wilson skip to keep up with her. "Well, I've run out of options, haven't I? If my mother doesn't make House run for the hills, nothing will. I spent a horrible hour on the phone telling her about House, making sure she wormed everything detrimental about him out of me without realising that I was volunteering the information."

As they reached Cuddy's car, she thrust the files she was carrying at Wilson so she could dig in her purse for her keys.

"Detrimental?" Wilson asked.

Having found the keys, Cuddy snapped the trunk open. "Oh, come along! He isn't exactly a dream of a son-in-law."

"Son-in-law?"

"Wilson, stop echoing me!" She took the files from Wilson's limp hands and chucked them into the trunk of the car.

"Doesn't your mother know that you're lesbian?"

"God, no!" Cuddy slammed the trunk shut, and then turned back to Wilson. "I let her believe that my relationships never last long enough for her to meet any of the guys involved. She thinks I'm some sort of, I don't know, _slut_." She did a combined eye-roll and head-waggle that indicated exasperation.

"That's better than her knowing that you love women?" Wilson said somewhat doubtfully.

"Yes!"

"So this is a first for your mom, meeting a boyfriend of yours," Wilson said in a bracing manner.

"A second," Cuddy corrected. "When I was nineteen I persuaded a gay friend of mine to act as my boyfriend." It was clear from her demeanour that the memory was not a happy one.

"Oh. It didn't work out well?"

Cuddy leaned against the side of her car, crossing her arms against the cold. "It worked out _too _well. Our parents, his _and _mine, were delighted that their kids were finally dating. They must have suspected something, and our 'relationship' allayed their fears. It took a lot of pressure off us; our parents were happy, and we could pursue our real interests without anyone suspecting anything, so we got carried away and decided to get married. It took us three days to figure out that it was a big mistake and three more to get an annulment. He was fine as a friend and fake boyfriend, but living with him 24/7 was a nightmare."

Wilson looked hurt. "I never knew you were married."

Cuddy waved a casual hand. "It doesn't count if the marriage is annulled."

Wilson grinned and hummed 'Like a Virgin'.

"Oh, shut up!" Cuddy snapped.

Wilson, trying to look contrite, changed the subject. "So you need me to pick up the bones once your mom has chewed all the flesh off House."

"I'll need you to drag House to my place by his collar, if need be."

"It's your birthday, and unlike me, he's never even met your mother. It shouldn't be that hard."

"He _will _have met her by Thursday evening. I took care to inform my mother that she needn't come before five because House has clinic duty till four p.m., and I've told Nurse Regina to assign any woman over fifty to House."

"Okay, it _will _be that hard."

"And don't even think of acting as his wingman," Cuddy said as she opened the driver's door. "Just sit there nodding, humming and hawing, and don't draw my mother's attention to yourself."

Wilson pinched the bridge of his nose. "I feel like Brutus."

"Let's get the right perspective on this: House has to suffer my mother for _one _evening;_ I've _been subjected to her all my life."

Wilson blinked in the harsh morning sunlight and tried to sit up. The room started spinning immediately. Groaning, he put his head down again at once and shut his eyes, trying to order familiar and unfamiliar impressions into some semblance of order. The fuzzy feeling in his mouth was familiar, the smell of the couch on which he was lying wasn't. So he'd been drugged and was now - where the hell was he?

"Here, drink that," a familiar husky voice ordered. A hand slipped under his head and raised it slightly.

Cuddy. He was at Cuddy's place. Wilson opened his eyes a notch and took the proffered glass. "Thawms," he mumbled. He took a few sips of water, relishing the way it washed away the mushy taste in his mouth. It also lifted some of the fog off his brain. "He drugged me!" Wilson said, hurt rather than angry.

"No. My mother drugged you."

Wilson didn't quite believe her. "Why would she do that?"

"You annoyed her?" Cuddy suggested.

"Who, me?" Wilson was all self-righteousness. "I was trying to be ... conciliatory. House was exuding hostility, not me. Hey, he _drugged _her."

"_She _tried to drug House," Cuddy offered.

"Tried?" Wilson latched onto the verb at once.

"He figured what she was up to, so he switched cups with her. Technically, House didn't drug her - she drugged herself."

Wilson digested that as he sat up. Someone - Cuddy, he assumed - had placed a cushion under his head and thrown an afghan over him, but he was still fully dressed. "What did your mom say when she came round?"

"What could she say? She could hardly admit that she tried to drug my boyfriend, so she pretended she'd gotten wasted." If Cuddy thought her mother's behaviour was in any way unconventional, she didn't show it.

"Oh." Wilson sought for another scapegoat. "House could have warned me."

Cuddy shrugged. "You annoyed him." This time it was a statement, not a question.

Cuddy's mother was undoubtedly a sociopath and House defied all 'normal' moral categories, but what about Cuddy? "Shouldn't you be a little, hmmm, upset about this? You were banking on your mother beating House into a headless flight. House roofying your mom has put paid to your well-laid plans."

Cuddy waved a regal little hand. "I've changed my mind on that. We, House and I, had a pleasant evening together - he helped me do the dishes and then we watched an old black-and-white movie."

Wilson knotted his brows, trying to imagine this scene of domestic bliss but failing miserably. House doing the dishes? He focused on Cuddy once more, who was picking at the afghan with a faraway expression.

She turned to him with a faint smile. "When my mother keeled over I was sort of relieved, which was when I realised that I'd miss House's company if my plan succeeded. Since I moved out of my parents' place I've never had anyone around me - anyone over two, that is. Someone who talks to me, does stuff with me, hangs around, does the odd chore ... _laughs _with me. It's nice. I'd never really thought about it, but before House came along, I was - alone. Now I'm not. So I've decided to, just, go along with it, flow with the current and see where it takes me."

"That doesn't sound like you."

"Twenty-five years of solitude - that's the story of my adult life. Even House has a better track record. So why not try something different?"

"A reversal of 'friends with benefits': 'Lovers with no benefits.' Sure, it might work." As always, Wilson managed to imply the exact opposite of what he said.

"It will work," Cuddy said with certainty. "How many people do you know whose relationships are unhappy because of sex: too much sex, too little sex, bad sex, sex with the wrong person?" She looked rather pointedly at Wilson, who had the grace to blush. "Take sex out of the equation and you remove a major cause for misery."

"That sounds good, but in your case, what exactly is left? Do you and House have _anything _in common?"

"Loneliness."


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N: **I apologize for the delay in posting; after 'Bombshells' aired, I decided to wait out the season finale to see how things would develop to pre-empt writing myself into a tight corner. When the season finale did air … it took me some time to recover. And then it took me some more time to figure out how I could fit the plotline into my 'verse. Here comes the first of three instalments that represent my effort to make the best of a bad deal.

**Warning:** This chapter leads up to the terminal illness of a major character. If that thought bothers you, you might want to stop reading here.

**Thanks as always to my beta Brighid45, who puts up very patiently with my insecurities.**

* * *

**IX: Family Practice**

_In which Wilson nags and Cuddy literally goes up in smoke._

"So, Bill, how are you today?"

The patient in the bed grunted. With her smile firmly glued in its place, Cuddy flicked open the patient's chart.

"How are you responding to the new medication?" Another ambiguous grunt. "Any dizziness? Faintness? How's your appetite?"

The patient didn't deign to respond at all. Sighing, Cuddy turned to the gaggle of students surrounding her to test them on their background knowledge of the case. The questions died on her lips when she realized that the students were not focused on her or the patient, but on something going on outside the patient's room. A few students were suppressing giggles, others simply looked puzzled. With an even deeper sigh, Cuddy followed their glances. Surprisingly, it wasn't House cutting capers in the corridor who was mesmerizing them; it was Wilson, doing a wild pantomime to get her attention.

Thrusting the patient's charts at the resident, Cuddy said, "You continue please, Dr Sinha." She approached Wilson, ignoring both Sinha's mild grunt of protest and the sobering premonition that she was about to get her head chewed off.

"How was the conference, James?" she asked with her best placatory smile.

"Fine," Wilson said briefly, "but Masters isn't. She's in my office having a melt-down, because according to her, Good Cop Cuddy deserted her, leaving Bad Cop House to threaten her with instruments of medieval torture."

"Ah, yes, there was some incident last week," Cuddy said vaguely, "but I don't really know anything about that." Off Wilson's look of disbelief she added, "I had ... other problems to deal with."

"Your mom. I heard."

"Well, then you understand that I couldn't give Masters and her personal issues with House my full attention." Behind them the students exited Bill's room, chattering loudly. Seeing Dr Sinha approach her, Cuddy grabbed Wilson's arm and led him to the elevators, punching the upward button when she reached the doors.

"Masters gave me a very garbled version of what happened. Between her allegation that House conned her into assaulting a patient and her tales of switched and double-switched medication, I'm beginning to wonder whether the poor girl is paranoid. You might want to do something about her," Wilson suggested. "You don't want her spreading either story around the hospital. House's situation is precarious enough without Masters making him out to be some Dr Mengele."

"What did she tell you?"

"Some mad tale about House pretending to treat your mother but feeding her placebos the while, which made your mother fire him, then really treating her after he got fired, switching her medication and then switching it back again - I lost track of what happened somewhere around the double switch. Oh, yes, and kidnapping her out of the ambulance when she decided to get transferred to Princeton General."

"Well, yes," Cuddy said noncommittally.

"Are you telling me that her rigmarole is ... true?" Wilson's eyebrows threatened to merge.

"No." Cuddy gave a tight smile. "That's the official version." The elevator doors opened, and Cuddy stepped inside briskly. Wilson followed, frowning when he saw which button Cuddy had pressed.

"So there's also an unofficial version," Wilson ventured. Cuddy looked unhappy, but chose not to elucidate. "You know," Wilson said conversationally, "I've known House for almost twenty years now, but even so I can't picture a scenario that's worse than the one Masters described to me."

"It wasn't House's fault," Cuddy admitted as the elevator stopped on the top floor.

"I gathered as much from Masters. ... Wait, are we really going up on the roof? Cuddy, it's cold out there!"

"It's secluded up there. Come along, we're both wearing lab coats. This won't kill us." She took the flight of stairs from the top floor in her usual brisk stride, Wilson trailing in her wake.

"Don't you think this is a bit melodramatic? I doubt anyone has bugged your office. Can't we ...,"

"No, we can't," Cuddy snapped, drawing a packet of cigarettes out of her lab coat and placing one between her lips with shaking fingers. She took it out again to wave it in Wilson's surprised face. "I set off the fire alarm two days ago by smoking in my en-suite bathroom - I _don't_ need a repetition of the ensuing fuss. I told security that it must have been House who set off the alarm. Seriously, why would anyone install a smoke detector in the dean's bathroom?"

"I - didn't know you smoke."

"I stopped after med school and started again last week." After lighting the cigarette she took a deep drag. She leaned on the balustrade, gazing out over Princeton as she blew out the smoke. Wilson moved over next to her, curiosity and the need to reassure her with his presence overcoming his physical discomfort at the chillness of the air. He waited patiently while Cuddy took a few more calming puffs. Finally she said, "It's complicated."

Wilson offered one of his platitudes. "It always is when family is involved."

"A year ago my mother had a hip replacement. About four months ago her orthopaedic specialist contacted her. He informed her that the manufacturing company was recalling the artificial hip because of technical problems and that she'd need to get it replaced. Mom freaked. She refused to have the hip replaced, saying that it was perfectly fine and that this was a plot to cover up surgical negligence during the operation. Nothing Julia or I said made any difference; in fact, she's suing the hospital where she got the replacement done."

"That ... doesn't make sense. For one, there's no way she can judge whether the artificial hip is okay or not; for another, if the hip wasn't placed correctly, that's all the more reason to get it looked into."

"None of this makes any sense!" Cuddy twisted a strand of her hair around a finger. "I think Mom may be in the early stages of dementia."

Wilson looked surprised. "I didn't notice anything."

"No, she's good at compensating, but something's been off lately, more than usual. She forgets stuff or mislays things, but she always has some excuse - the glass of wine that made her fuzzy or the unexpected phone call that drove whatever it was clear out of her mind. I think she's started drinking during the day so that she has an explanation for anything that goes wrong. And she's become downright paranoid, so she's convinced that all her doctors are involved in a huge scam to rob her of her money while ignoring her real medical issues. That includes me, of course."

"Can't you do anything - get a care giver or something?"

"That won't stop her paranoia, and so far she has Julia firmly on her side. Julia refuses to believe that something's seriously wrong with Mom. She's convinced that Mom is just being a little 'difficult'." Cuddy sketched quotation marks in the air. "When I couldn't get my mother to see sense about the hip replacement, I went and ranted to House about it. I didn't dare to hope he'd be of any help - he just happened to be around, so I vented my frustration on him. But House came up with a solution. He told me to get Mom admitted on some pretext, and then he'd take care of the rest."

"What? Admitting your mother to your own hospital was House's idea?"

"Yes, it was," Cuddy said with a hint of smugness. "She'd never have agreed to be taken here, so I planned a shopping trip in the vicinity, and then spiked her drink with beta blockers."

"I take it that inducing bradycardia was also House's idea? Oh, forget it, just tell me House's brilliant master plan."

"Oh, the plan was quite simple: he intended to administer meds that would make her condition increasingly worse; then, when she was convinced that she was dying, he'd pull the diagnosis 'cobalt poisoning due to a defective artificial hip' out of his hat and get her consent for the operation."

"Downright ingenuous in its simplicity," Wilson deadpanned. Then he grew serious. "You agreed to this?"

"It seemed preferable to her dying of _real _cobalt poisoning. She's planning an extended vacation in the South in summer. If she falls sick then, there's no way anyone can diagnose her, not when the last thing she'd mention in her medical history is that she's been running around with an artificial hip that should have been removed months ago."

"So what went wrong?"

Cuddy drew out another cigarette. "My mom fired House before he had a chance to poison her thoroughly. I put Marty Kaufmann on the case because he's a bumbling idiot - yes, that was House's idea too - but neither of us had reckoned with the team."

"You initiated the diagnostic team into a plan that was illegal, unethical and totally insane even by House's standards, and expected them to go along with it?" Wilson asked incredulously.

"No, of course not!" Cuddy countered with equal indignation. "I'm not crazy. If my mom ever finds out what we did, she'd probably stop short of suing _me_, but she'd have no compunction about suing diverse members of my staff. The less they know the better. The problem was that since they _didn't _know what was going on, they didn't want to switch Mom's medication once House was pulled off the case. Marty, you see, was prescribing the good stuff to make her get better."

"Ah, yes, asking them to tamper with the patient's medication without her consent in order to worsen her condition was okay, but telling them why they were doing so wasn't."

"They're House's team - they do this sort of thing all the time," Cuddy justified herself.

"But not on _your _orders."

"Those were House's orders, not mine."

"Same difference, as House was acting on your orders. Besides, he isn't a doctor and he isn't their boss anymore."

"Precisely. Foreman refused outright, deciding that killing his boss's mother on the orders of a delusional ex-employer would not further his career. Which was okay, really," Cuddy added, blowing smoke into the sky. "At least House and I knew what we were working with there. Chase, however, figured that pissing off his boss's boyfriend might be just as detrimental to his career as killing his boss's mother, so he opted for a middle path. He agreed to switch the meds, but he secretly replaced the meds House had ordered with the ones Marty was prescribing. There came a point where it wasn't clear to _anyone _which meds she was getting, especially since Masters created complete confusion by informing Marty of what she _thought _was going on. In the end House and I more or less knocked Mom out with a narcotic and then made a big show of pretending to find some necrotic tissue at her hip."

"This ... is bad," Wilson judged.

"Yes."

"Worse than what Masters told me."

"Yes."

"It's bad enough that you're treating your own kith and kin here at your hospital. No one here has the guts to stop you, so you nearly killed your mother on the assumption that she might, just _might_, become critically ill at some undefined point in the future," Wilson held up his hand to stop Cuddy's protest, "and you got House embroiled in the mess on a false pretext."

Cuddy's eyebrows went up at that.

"A false pretext," Wilson repeated. "House took an enormous risk for something he wasn't medically interested in, because he thinks he's your boyfriend."

"What risk?"

"Losing his licence, if either Marty or your mother complained to the board, maybe?"

"He doesn't have a licence!" Cuddy pointed out with an exasperated huff.

"No, but he doesn't know that. Look at it from House's point of view. He'd never have got himself involved in a case like this - your family involved, no puzzle whatsoever, and any amount of bother coming his way if anything went wrong, which it did! - if he hadn't been thinking of the perks this would get him."

"Like gratitude sex."

"I was thinking more in terms of 'couple-bonding in the face of adversity'."

Cuddy scowled petulantly. "Who says we aren't bonding over this?"

Wilson threw up his arms and turned to leave. "Call it what you like, but you're using him."

As the heavy metal door slammed behind him Cuddy lit her third cigarette. "House is right - you nag!" she said to the empty space he'd left.

* * *

**X: Carrot or Stick, Two Stories**

_Depicts the battle between Tradition (as embodied by her model mother) and Anarchy (in the form of her would-rather-not-be father) in the life of __Miss Rachel Cuddy._

Cuddy was vacillating between a pearl chain and a silver necklace with a pendant when the doorbell rang. She went to the door in bare feet and opened it after quickly checking the peep-hole. Wilson stood outside, brushing a few raindrops off his coat. He stepped forward to give Cuddy a hug.

"Sorry I'm late. I had to give Sarah her insulin shot before coming here."

Cuddy stepped aside and waved him in. "It's fine - I still have half-an-hour. Rachel's asleep already - she shouldn't be any problem." She reached out to take his coat from him. "If you wanted a pet that's more trouble than it is worth, you could have kept House," she added as she led the way back to her bedroom.

"You're beginning to sound like him. What happened to the bonding process?"

"Sorry. He's just - driving me crazy." Cuddy shook her head as though to clear it. Struck by a sudden thought, she turned back to Wilson, who was following her rather hesitatingly. "Tell me, when you were sharing the condo, did he ever take the trash out?"

"No!" Wilson said with a laugh that was more of a snort.

"Hmmm. Leave the toilet seat up?" Cuddy waved Wilson, who was hovering at the door, into her bedroom and indicated the bed. He perched awkwardly on its edge, trying not to let his eyes roam around the room.

"Not really an issue, with two guys sharing an apartment. But now that you mention it, he always puts it down. A relic of his childhood training, he says."

"Drilled into him by his father," Cuddy surmised, opting for the pearl chain.

Wilson looked thoughtful. "No, quite the opposite. He told me that his dad used to leave the seat up on purpose, which irritated his mother no end. She'd grin and bear it, saying to House that men will be men, or something to that effect. That made House determined to prove to his mother that it was just his father being a jerk, so he'd always put the seat down."

"See, that's how I remember seeing it whenever I was at his apartment. The seat was _always _down. Now that he's practically living here, he leaves the seat up." Cuddy tilted her head in the mirror as she fixed a pearl ear stud in her left ear. "What about toothpaste stains in the washbasin?"

"No, he's fussy about hygiene in the bathroom and in the kitchen."

"And did he ever use your toothbrush?"

"Jeez, no! He had his own. Just get him a spare toothbrush."

"I _did_," Cuddy said, giving her appearance a last check before turning away from the mirror. "I've got a whole bathroom cabinet full of spare ones - okay, I'm exaggerating - but he won't use them. He chews up mine."

"Sounds like when he was trying to drive a wedge between me and 'Sam'," Wilson noted.

"So he's jerking me around." She picked up the handbag that was lying on the bed and preceded Wilson out of the bedroom into the living room.

"Perhaps now that the honeymoon period is over, he's reverting to slovenly male behaviour." There were some snacks on the coffee table, to which Wilson gravitated gratefully.

"We've just established that his default behaviour isn't all that slovenly. Besides, House is a creature of habit. He's quite incapable of putting up a civilized façade even for one day, let alone a honeymoon period. House's packaging is transparent - you buy what you see. Wilson, would you write me a recommendation?"

Cuddy was gathering a few stray toys from the floor and throwing them into a large box that was standing in one corner of the living room. Wilson blinked. "I'm ... sorry?"

She looked up, grinning at his confusion, and walked over to a pile of brochures lying on a side table. "A recommendation." Cuddy handed the top brochure to him. "For pre-school, for Rachel. Though some discipline and structure wouldn't do House any harm either. This place," she waved a hand at the brochure Wilson was holding, "wants a recommendation from a friend of the family."

"Sure, no problem. What do you want me to write?" Wilson asked obligingly. He squinted at the pile that Cuddy was still holding. "Are you thinking of applying to _all_ these places?"

"Yes." Thumping the brochures onto the coffee table, she sat down on the couch, smoothing her dress down routinely.

Wilson sat down next to her. "Aren't you overdoing it? It can't be that difficult to get a child into pre-school."

"I need to get applications in at more pre-schools than House can find the time to visit in his campaign to sabotage Rachel's chances of getting an education."

"You're being harsh. House was trying to help."

"By going to a Career Day at the school that he thought I was trying to get Rachel into, holding a talk spiked with sexual innuendos and designed to drag our profession into disrepute, assaulting a parent (or was it a teacher?), corrupting two fifth-graders by revealing intimate details about his relationship, and then informing the principal that he was my boy-friend? How exactly does that improve my chances of getting Rachel admitted to Brye Park? They phoned this afternoon suggesting that I withdraw the application."

Wilson blushed for his friend. "He didn't mean for all that to happen. That's just ... House, but he meant it for the best. He knew you were upset at him, and he was worried you'd be even more upset if another school rejected Rachel, so he ... "

"They would never have rejected Rachel if he hadn't interfered," Cuddy stated flatly.

"Well, Waldenwood rejected her."

"Because of House."

"Oh, no, no!" Wilson remonstrated. "He didn't do _anything _there. Hey, he may not have told you, but he spent _hours _in my office teaching Rachel the skills she needed to pass their admission test."

Cuddy swivelled to face him. "Wilson, I'm the dean of a small, but renowned teaching hospital. If I brought a dressed-up chimp to any one of these schools saying she was my daughter, they'd admit her without batting an eyelid. Rachel needs no special skills to get into a good pre-school. All she needs is the right parents."

"House told me that Rachel was rejected because the school was oversubscribed and siblings got priority," Wilson said weakly.

"Crap! I know someone who knows someone on the staff. Rachel didn't get rejected because she has no siblings at Waldenwood. Nor because she's too stupid. Not even because they resented House training her for the test - a lot of parents do that. No, Rachel got rejected because after House's theatrical performance, the admissions officer decided that they didn't need a child with parents like that."

"But - he didn't go to Waldenwood."

"Oh, yes, he did! And he made absolutely sure that they saw him." Cuddy played her trump. "He came along for Rachel's admission test."

"He probably wanted to be supportive," Wilson said with the mien of a general whose flanks have just collapsed.

"Supportive, my foot! All the other fathers were in suits and ties, while House was sporting a ridiculous baseball cap. That got _everyone's _attention, including that of the staff members who'd seen him on his previous visit when he'd pretended to be a Health Inspector or something like that. Those teachers aren't the brightest bulbs in the box, but they soon figured out that they were dealing with a criminal element."

Wilson knew when a battle was lost. He rubbed a hand wearily over his forehead. "So House cost you your two first choices."

"No. Brye Park Academy was just a decoy to test my theory that House sabotaged my attempt to get her into Waldenwood."

"But," Wilson said, frowning in confusion, "House hacked into your laptop ... . You'd written in your journal that Brye Park Academy was your first choice."

Cuddy rolled her eyes at so much trusting naivety. "House hacks into my laptop at least once a week. I don't write anything in my journal there - into any journal, for that matter - that I don't want him to read. And sometimes I write stuff in there _especially _for him. Like wanting to get Rachel into Brye Park." She flicked idly through the pile of brochures in front of her. "Where'd that brochure come from? I didn't order that!" She drew out one that looked much the same as all the others: glossy on the outside, lots of pictures of smiling children inside, and pink post-its sticking up from strategic pages.

Shrugging, Wilson flicked open the one Cuddy had given him to write his reference for. It fell open at the centrefold, displaying a neatly uniformed throng standing in ascending ranks in an assembly hall. 'Redland Seminar: Traditional Values Meet Modern Teaching Methods,' the caption read.

"I'm sure I never ordered a brochure from Westhill Wilds," Cuddy said, stabbing the offending object with one forefinger. "That school is unsuitable. Look at their pre-school time-table - free play outside every afternoon!"

Wilson peered over at the page she was studying. "So? Their grounds are nice: a sort of rambling wilderness with lots of adventure stuff. I'm sure the kids aren't bored playing out there every day. They probably love it." _His _brochure showed girls in pink leotards and tutus practicing basic ballet steps in a mirrored room.

"Yeah, she'll come home covered in mud, but without a smidgen of knowledge in her head. No formal instructions, no pre-school foreign language programme. They have some sort of Orff group for Rachel's age group, but no instrumental lessons. She should start the piano or the violin soon."

"Cuddy, she's three!" Wilson remonstrated.

"She'll be in that school till she's six, and I haven't got the time to take her to ballet lessons (or soccer or whatever) or to music lessons. Either she does it at school or she won't do it at all. And everyone needs a foreign language or two nowadays."

Cuddy turned to the next page. It had a picture of an indoor gym with trampolines and ball baths (and the obligatory grinning kids), and another one of a horde of children painting their classroom in garish colours, their obligatory grins amplified by the layers of paint that covered them. Cuddy grimaced, but Wilson said, "I kinda get what House sees in this place, as far as he's capable of being enthused by places of education."

"House?"

"Yeah, those are House's post-its. You stick your post-its in sloppily," Wilson pointed out, holding up the Redland Seminar brochure in illustration. "His are aligned to the edge of the paper."

"You think House is trying to sell me this school?" Cuddy turned the pages carefully as though fearing an anthrax attack.

"It would explain how the brochure got on your pile."

"Yeah, I get what he sees in it too - the element of anarchy. Talking of House, where the hell is he?" She cast an irritated glance at the clock.

Wilson's eyebrows rose. "Oh, are you going out with House? I thought you were wining and dining some donors."

"Then House could have babysat."

"You're going out with House although he's pushing every boundary he can find? What happened to ... ," Wilson skimmed Redland Seminar's Code of Conduct and came up with, " _''immediately challenging inappropriate behaviour when it occurs'_?"

"We're at the _'developing a rapport'_ stage, and I'm _'reinforcing modified behaviour with positive feedback_'," Cuddy quoted back at him. "He has apologized for the ravaged toothbrush and bought one of his own."

"Where's he taking you?"

"_Dominica's_. He still owes me a dinner there. Remember Alice Tanner? We never did get to the restaurant after the good woman nearly brained me."

"You got him to take you to a place where he has to wear a suit? Wow!"

"_And _a tie," Cuddy said with a triumphant smirk. "Oh, he quite enjoys it on special occasions."

A car horn blared outside. Wilson rolled his eyes, while Cuddy jumped up. "Well, I hope he behaves himself and doesn't cause a scene."

"Oh, he will - scenes of female mass hysteria, and that quite unintentionally." She walked into the hall, where she slipped into a pair of killer heels. "When he walks in, every female head swivels round. I've seen women drool when he puts on his reading glasses to read the menu or rolls up his sleeves when it gets warm. You wouldn't believe under what pretences they come up to our table to hit on him!"

Wilson held out her coat for her. "Does that bother you? You can't really be jealous if you're not ... sexually interested, can you?"

"I may not be jealous, but I have a damn possessive streak!" She gave him a quick peck before she flounced out of the door.

* * *

**XI: Bombshells**

_The Author of this work apologizes most sincerely, should the contents of this chapter upset the tender sensibilities of her Readers. Be assured that if The Powers That Be had left her with any other choice, she would have taken it gladly, rejoicing in being able to grant her Readers relief from the sadness that must perforce have overcome them at the end of the last season. Alas, it was not to be! _

_**Statutory Warning**__: Future Character Death Implied! Read at your own risk!_

It was Julia who opened the door for Wilson, smiling when she saw that it wasn't House. "Hello, James. Come in."

"Hello, Julia." Wilson's return smile was perfunctory. Cuddy now appeared at the door of the living room, holding a mug of tea. "Hey, Cuddy. How are you doing?"

"Great. Everything's healing well." She was still a little pale, and her movements were slower than usual.

"Julia, could I have a moment with Cuddy? Thanks." Wilson's tone brooked no denial. He followed Cuddy back into the living room, his briefcase tucked under his arm, while Julia, with an eye roll that had to be in the Cuddy genes, headed for the kitchen. When Wilson closed the living-room door behind him, Cuddy's eyebrows rose in surprise, but she made no comment. Wilson waited until she was seated on the couch, and then he took the armchair next to her. "How's House doing?" he asked offhandedly.

Cuddy smiled again. "He's fine, too. Relieved. He ... ." She fell silent, her fingernails tapping against her mug. Finally she turned to Wilson, fixing him with an accusing stare. "You know, you could have been a bit more supportive? I know this was difficult for you, too, but House - needed you."

"I was busy." Wilson's eyes travelled to his briefcase.

"Too busy to make sure he wasn't relapsing? When he finally came to me in the middle of the night he was stoned!" If Cuddy was expecting any sort of shock or dismay, she was disappointed. Wilson's face remained non-committal. She tried again. "I'm pretty sure it was only a one-off, but what if the results hadn't been good? If he couldn't get through _that _without chugging a pill, bad news would have sent him into a total tail-spin."

Wilson leaned over to his briefcase, opened it and withdrew a large manila envelope. "That's why I was busy - I was faking the results of the tissue analysis in advance. Lisa, here are the real results." He proffered the envelope.

Cuddy stared at him wide-eyed, her hand reaching out automatically. She opened the envelope and scanned the two sheets inside it. Finally she lowered them onto her lap, her thumbs tracing random circles on the top sheet while she stared blankly at the opposite wall. "I've got cancer."

"I'm sorry."

She turned to look at Wilson, a faint glimmer of hope still in her eyes. "And the other results, the ones that said I was clean?"

Wilson took a deep breath. "Those were for House's benefit. Foreman called me that night after the imaging came in, saying that House was ... in a bad state and that he had some vicodin from his previous patient. I ... I couldn't deal with both of you - you possibly dying and House relapsing - at the same time, so I decided to buy some time." He stood up and walked to the fireplace, massaging the back of his neck as he leaned against the mantelpiece, half turned away from Cuddy. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry I got your hopes up, but I didn't know what else to do."

"It's okay. You did fine." Cuddy straightened and tucked the sheets back into the envelope, her hands shaking slightly, but her expression calm and collected.

Wilson came back and sat down next to her. "Look, the prognosis isn't that bad. We can remove the kidney, and we'll start you on something for the metastases in the lungs ..."

"How long?"

"Renal cell carcinoma is difficult to predict, but median survival time for stage IV is over a year. Sometimes the disease progresses very slowly, and we've had very good results, _very _good ones with Sunitinib; you could still have years ahead of you."

Cuddy was silent.

Wilson leaned over slightly and put a hand on her arm. "Can I do anything for you? A cup of tea?"

"No, I'm fine. I just had one. Besides, Julia is here." Cuddy's stare was unfocused; one of her hands worried the neckline of her top, while she bit her lower lip with her upper teeth. Wilson gave her arm a gentle squeeze. As if that was a signal, Cuddy suddenly tapped her forehead with the tips of her fingers and rose. Wilson followed suit, mystified.

"Where are you going?"

"To House."

"Umm, do you think that's a good idea?" Wilson trailed behind her as she moved towards the door of the living-room. "You've only just got bad news - you're upset, vulnerable. His reaction may not be ... supportive at first. Give yourself time to deal with your own emotions before you burden yourself with his."

Cuddy whirled round to him, grimacing slightly as the sudden movement pulled at her stitches, clutching his arm as much in anger as for support. "Of _course _his reaction won't be supportive! We've just witnessed what his idea of support is - MIA till the last moment, and then he turns up stoned to the gills." She let go of Wilson's arm, covering her eyes with her hand for a moment instead. "Okay, that isn't quite fair, but we both know that he won't be around to watch me die. He'll be wallowing in vicodin and scotch and anything else he can find, numbing his emotions so he won't have to think about his pain or mine."

"I know you go for this 'sharing misery to average it out' thing, but he won't be _sharing _your misery, he'll be increasing it by adding a good portion of his to yours. Because, believe me, he's the Einstein of misery - he can turn mass into it."

Cuddy leaned against the door. "Wilson, you've bought us time, and I intend to put it to good use. I'm going over to his place to break up with him."

"He'll freak!" Wilson objected, hovering over her. "This won't end any better than you telling him that you do have cancer after all."

Cuddy smiled grimly. "House, as you frequently point out, is not really my boyfriend. It wouldn't be fair on him to make him watch me die. Yes, a break-up will be messy and unpleasant, _very _unpleasant, but for House it will be nowhere near as bad as me dying as his girlfriend."

Wilson hit the wall with the side of his fist, but gently so as not to wake Rachel. "I don't see what we win this way. We'll just have the nuclear meltdown twice, once now and once more when you ... die. If you die."

"A year is a long time. Who knows, he may find someone else by then." Cuddy avoided Wilson's eyes as she pushed herself off the door and opened it.

"You don't believe that yourself!"

She shrugged. "Maybe not. But in a year's time he won't be thinking of me as his girlfriend anymore. I'll be The Bitch Who Dumped Him Because Of One Stupid Vicodin, which will make my death a lot easier to bear. Are you driving me?" Wilson looked at her helplessly. "I take it that's a yes." As she slipped into a pair of flat shoes she continued, "I won't be able to stay on my feet forever. Sooner or later I'll have to resign and leave PPTH, and at that point at the very latest House will figure out that something is wrong with me. I need to get away from him before that happens. With a bit of luck House will do something so drastic in response to being dumped that we'll be able to sell him my resignation as a reaction to whatever bullshit he inflicts on me. Then I can crawl away to die in some hole where he won't find me."

"You'd do that for him?"

"For him?" Cuddy laughed mirthlessly. "For myself! House may melt down when I die, but before he does, he'll be trying out all sorts of tests and procedures on me in the hope of proving your diagnosis wrong or reversing the course of destiny. Do you remember Ezra Powell? Well, _I'd _like to die with a shred of dignity, spending as much time as possible with Rachel before I go, _not_ subjecting myself to a Houseian Crusade against Renal Cancer. Trust me - we'll all be happier this way."


	4. Chapter 4

**XII: Fall from Grace**

_Wilson shows open-mindedness towards immigrants seeking permanent residence by dubious means, but deep-rooted prejudices about House's recreational drug use, while Cuddy whines._

"Remind me again why I'm doing this." Cuddy sat on House's bed, her head in her hands. Wilson, who had followed her into the bedroom, was too busy mustering the various articles of furniture to pay much attention to her.

"Doing what?" he asked perfunctorily as he moved to the bedside table and pulled its drawer open.

"Attending House's wedding. I'm pretty sure that as his ex-girlfriend, I'd be justified in staying away."

"You're his ex-_not_-girlfriend, remember? This shouldn't be bothering you." After a quick rummage around the contents, Wilson shut the drawer again. Next, he moved to the wardrobe.

"It does. First, he's doing it to hurt me, really hurt me, and _that _- the fact that he'd go to such extremes to get under my skin - really hurts. Second, I like House enough to feel bad watching him marry a hooker."

"She isn't a hooker," Wilson corrected, stirring through House's shirts. He looked up, frowning, as the sound of applause drifted in from the living-room. Turning to Cuddy he asked, "Could you keep an eye out at the door, please?"

Cuddy rolled her eyes, but got up to do his bidding. "She's granting sexual favours, among other things, for material benefits. Sounds like a hooker to _me_."

"Until recently, that was the main basis for marriage in our society, and it still is in many others. And for your information, sex isn't part of the deal."

"Says who?" Cuddy asked petulantly.

"Dominika. I had a longish talk with her yesterday. It was very interesting." The contents of the wardrobe were less so, judging by Wilson's expression.

"You ... hit on House's wife?"

"Technically, his fiancée," Wilson corrected once again. "_Yesterday _they weren't married yet. And I didn't hit on her; I interrogated her. Found out some interesting stuff."

"Such as?"

"She's a trained nurse."

"Right. From some obscure college in Eastern Europe that sells degrees."

"You _are _jealous," Wilson noted. "No, she has _bona fide _credentials and a few years' work experience in oncology. Under cover of a little chat between two people who share the same speciality, I asked her questions that only someone who has worked in the field could have answered, and she passed with flying colours."

"So House is marrying some long-legged illegal to piss me off, but he's chosen an oncology nurse to, what, mollify you?"

"Or he's anticipating that he'll need medical care in the near-ish future." Wilson was so deep inside the wardrobe that his voice was muffled.

"You still haven't told me what you're looking for."

"Drugs."

"And you couldn't have done that without me?"

Wilson re-emerged with a shoe-box full of letters that he thumbed through. "Actually, I asked you to attend the wedding because I was hoping that seeing you here would deter House at the last moment. But since it hasn't, I may as well grasp the opportunity to do a little search."

"And what will you do if you find a secret little stash of vicodin? Tell House that he's being a naughty boy?" Cuddy left her position at the door frame and marched back into the room. "Wilson, this is ridiculous! He's popping pills openly in front of friend and foe. He doesn't need a secret stash - he's got a public one!"

"There isn't a single pill here." Pushing the box back into the wardrobe, Wilson rose irritably. As he dusted off his knees, he looked around the room for other possibilities. "You see, he stole my prescription pad ...,"

"He did - _what_?" Cuddy sank onto the bed, holding her head in her hands. "Oh my God! We're headed for another Tritter affair. Well, this time he can stew in jail for all I care!"

"... but he hasn't used it. I've sent an email to all the pharmacies in the area asking them to inform me whenever a prescription issued in my name turns up, but so far they haven't notified me of anything that isn't legit."

"He could be getting his vicodin somewhere else - on the streets, for instance."

"Why would he do that when he's got my pad? Why steal my pad if he doesn't intend to use it? It doesn't make sense, unless ...," Wilson trailed off, moving over to the flatscreen that stood at the foot of the bed. It was perched on top of a small chest of drawers. Wilson opened the first drawer.

"Unless what?"

"Unless he's trying to distract me from what he's _really _taking by making me believe that he's 'only' on vicodin." Wilson pulled a face at the collection of DVDs in the drawer, lifted the pile of magazines next to them for a quick check, and then turned to the next drawer.

"So, what do you think he's taking, if it isn't vicodin? Methadone again?"

"That, or heroin. Possibly Fentanyl," Wilson said with no overt emotion. He drew a small packet out of the second drawer. "Ah!"

"What is it?" Cuddy got up and came to him.

Wilson opened the packet and tipped its contents on to his hand. Small, white, oblong pills. He lifted one up and gave it a tentative lick. His face fell. "Breath mints."

Cuddy scrutinized the box, and then gave Wilson a mocking smile. "How amazing! Breath mints in breath mint packets - who would have thought it?" She returned to her slumped position on the bed.

Wilson pointed at the contents of the open drawer. "Eight boxes of breath mints that look exactly like vicodin from a distance in the bedroom of a guy who never takes breath mints? Yes, I _do _think that is surprising. He's messing with me."

"They could be Dominika's," Cuddy remarked. She added rather bitterly, "Or maybe he likes to keep his breath sweet for her, but not for me."

Wilson finally took note of Cuddy's drawn expression and her sagging shoulders. He sat down next to her, placing an arm around her shoulders. "Look, I'm sorry I made you come. I wasn't thinking."

Waving off his concern, Cuddy gave a shaky smile. "It's okay. I really shouldn't be letting it upset me."

"The hookers the first few days after the break-up didn't seem to bother you."

"That was just sex. I don't mind him having sex - why should I?" Cuddy absently fingered the pyjamas peeking out from under the bedcovers. "But now he's ... _replacing _me."

* * *

**XII: The Dig, Last Temptation**

_Wherein Cuddy's prompt provokes a Hygienic Incident in the sterile halls of PPTH, and House's uri__nary habits are the subject of Public Scrutiny._

An ominous shadow fell over Cuddy's food tray. She looked up from her meagre meal to Wilson, who didn't look pleased to see her. "You shouldn't be back at work yet. You just had a kidney removed."

Cuddy sighed as she waved Wilson into the seat opposite hers. "It was ten days ago, and I have no choice. House is back, and he'll start snooping around if I'm not here."

"How'd you manage to get rid of him for ten days without him smelling a rat?"

"I suggested to him that it would be difficult to convince immigration of the veracity of his marriage unless he did something that could pass as a token honeymoon."

"He went with that?"

"I also hinted that I'd find it a lot easier to lie to immigration for him at a pinch if he got himself off my back for a few days, and that conversely I might feel inclined to make a phone call or two in the right places if he didn't."

"You couldn't have made it 'a few weeks' instead of a few days, and given yourself time to recover properly from the operation?" Wilson asked with some asperity.

"I had difficulties enough convincing him that I needed a few days to recover from the sight of him getting married to that ... girl. There's no way he would have bought a few weeks. He'd have started snooping around straightaway. In fact, he did anyway." Cuddy poked a few items of food experimentally before she speared a tomato.

"But?" Wilson prompted.

Cuddy looked smug as she twirled the tomato around on her fork. "Unfortunately, I'd left a confidential letter from Dr Hadley's probation officer with the date and time of her release from prison lying around."

Wilson sat up straight. "Thirteen was in prison?"

"Yes. House knew that, but not why."

"I take it you aren't going to tell me," Wilson said with unmasked displeasure.

"Employee confidentiality," Cuddy said smoothly, ignoring Wilson's snort of disbelief. "I visited Dr Hadley the week before her release and told her that if she wanted her job back, she'd better give House a run for his money. Then there was that annual spud gun competition ..."

Wilson mustered her with growing admiration. "How the hell do you even know all that?"

Cuddy waved the impaled tomato regally. "House isn't the only one who can read other people's calendars. I got someone from IT to hack into his. That should have gotten me another three to five days, but it didn't play out as planned." She shrugged and returned her attention to the food in front of her. The tomato joined the other items; the fork was replaced neatly on the tray.

"It's only a two-day affair," Wilson pointed out.

"I bribed one of the geeks there to provoke House. Seems the geek provoked the sheriff as much as he provoked House, so House only spent a few hours in jail, more's the pity." Cuddy got up gingerly and picked up the tray of uneaten food.

Wilson hastened to relieve her of her burden. He adjusted his pace to Cuddy's hesitant steps. "Given your vigorous, bouncy stride House won't have to snoop around to find out what's wrong with you. He'll figure it out in five minutes."

"So, distract him. Keep him off my back!" Cuddy instructed.

"You want me to find him a patient?"

"No, I've got a patient for him. Plus, I'm pulling Masters off his team and placing her in surgery."

Wilson slid the tray into the rack. "How's that supposed to help?"

"House hates change, even if it's change for the positive. He'll be scheming to get her back, instead of figuring that he's happier without her. I want you to distract him further. Play some of your stupid games with him: saw through his cane again, steal his guitar or whatever. Do whatever it takes to keep him busy," She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Thwarted instructed.

Wilson rubbed the back of his neck.

"What?" Cuddy snapped.

"It's a bit difficult to think of anything suitable under pressure," he admitted sheepishly

Cuddy rolled her eyes.

Wilson spread his hands. "Usually my _divertissements _arise from the occasion. I need a trigger, ... or at least a prompt."

Cuddy glanced at the blackboard on which the specials of the day were chalked up. "Chicken," she said.

"Chicken it is," Wilson assented.

_**A week later.**_

Wilson re-read the instruction manual a fourth time, placed the test tube carefully into the designated slot and pressed the 'Start' button. Then he leaned his head on his hand and closed his eyes. It was late, even by his standards, and the lab was empty. The print-outs in front of him stared at him accusingly.

A familiar clackity-clack approached down the deserted hallway. There was a short pause, then the lab door opened and the sound, amplified, mingled with the hum of the lab equipment. Cuddy peered over his shoulder. "Are you considering a career as lab technician?"

Wilson raised his head and waved his hand vaguely towards the print-outs in front of him. "House's urine sample."

"Anything in it?"

"No. I've run it three times." There was no ignoring the defeat in Wilson's tone. He clearly expected no new revelations from the fourth analysis that he'd just started,

"Why are you so surprised? He has probably trained his golden retriever to pee into a cup for him."

"I sent Masters into the stall with him. I didn't think he'd manage to cheat with her making sure that he - and he only - peed into that cup," Wilson explained.

"Why would House agree to this farce? Is this one of your stupid bets?" Cuddy asked suspiciously.

Wilson leaned back in his chair with his hands spread on the table before him. "House wanted to get rid of Masters. I said I'd take care of it, but letting her invade his privacy was the price he'd have to pay if he wanted it done without having to deal with you."

"Well, Foreman has signed her up as an intern. Her paperwork is fine. There's nothing House or I can do about that now," Cuddy said with finality, leaning back against the lab table. "What's got into him, anyway? In his roundabout way, he basically begged to be allowed to keep her."

"That was _before_ she maimed Sailor Girl. She conned the parents into consenting to an amputation by inducing a life-threatening situation."

"That's exactly the sort of thing House does himself," Cuddy pointed out.

"No, it isn't! House dupes his patients into consenting to procedures until he has a diagnosis. Once he has that, he lets them decide for themselves whether they want to get treated or die. Masters had her diagnosis, but then she didn't respect her patient's choice. House," Wilson paused, "doesn't like that, for obvious reasons."

"She was a minor!" Cuddy protested. "Not even House believes in letting kids commit suicide. When minors make stupid decisions, House bullies their parents into doing the right thing."

"Which is what Masters should have done. House believes that parents should learn to make the right call, instead of being conned into it, else the next time a situation like that arises - and who's to say that girl won't sabotage her own treatment at some later stage and steam-roller over her parents once again? - the parents will cave once more. They have to learn to make decisions against her resistance, instead of doing it behind her back. House expects his people to stand up to stupid family, either like Foreman, with logical determination, or like Cameron, with firm empathy, or like Thirteen, with brutal frankness. What he doesn't need is Masters's weak, 'You _ought _to be doing this.' The parents _know _what's right; it's just that they choose the path of least resistance. House expects his fellows to point patients and their families down the right path, not close down all the wrong ones."

Cuddy was practically gaping at Wilson. "He ... told you all this?"

"Well, more or less. We talked about the case, yes."

"Oh."

"What's the matter?"

"Nothing. It's just that - he doesn't talk to me anymore." Cuddy briefly touched her forehead with her fingers, before dropping her hand and reverting to her normal brisk manner. "But what's all this got to do with House's urine sample?"

"I wanted a urine sample so I can figure out what House is using. House wants to be rid of Masters; he agreed to let Masters supervise the taking of the sample, provided I could use that to get rid of her. I was going to return to Masters with positive test results and tell her, '_Dr Cuddy is going to be really pissed when she sees those, because it means that she'll have to run an intervention, and we all know how that'll end._' And she'd have gaped at me and said, _'But his test results must have been positive these past two months!_' And I'd have said, _'No, they've __always __been negative, because everyone else knows better and lets House cheat on his urine samples. You're the first moron to have taken a real, unadulterated sample, and now there'll be hell to pay!_' And then I'd have advised her to transfer to some other department as quickly as possible, because even if House actually cooperated enough during the intervention to save his career, he'd be so pissed at Masters that her life would be sheer hell."

"So what's to stop you from faking the test results and doing just that?" Cuddy enquired.

"Oh, no need. She believes he's on vicodin: he's been chugging his damn breath mints in front of her just to rile her. So I'll go to her with the negative test results and tell her that you're fuming because she's clearly colluding with House to prevent an intervention, which, in your opinion, he sorely needs before he self-destructs. And then I'll advise her to transfer to another department or, preferably, another hospital before you initiate disciplinary measures against her for shielding her boss."

"So you get what you want either way."

"No. _House _gets what he wants. _I _still don't know what House is using." Wilson looked aggrieved.

Cuddy picked up one of the print-outs and scanned it. "Nothing, obviously."

"You don't believe that, do you?"

"Masters supervised the urine sample; the sample is clean. Ergo, House isn't on drugs. _'When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.' "_

"Are you quoting House at me?"

Cuddy smiled wistfully. "Sherlock Holmes, actually. But yes, I got that one from House - when he was still talking to me."

* * *

**XIV: Changes**

_Of clandestine trysts in coffee shops, financial fiascos and fool-proof methods of dealing with House._

Wilson eyed the man leaving the coffee shop suspiciously before sidling up to Cuddy at the counter. "Who was that creepy guy?"

Cuddy jumped, spilling sugar over the counter. Giving Wilson a glare she replied, "My banker."

"You're meeting your banker clandestinely in a coffee shop." Wilson looked at her sideways, not quite believing her.

"I don't want House barging in. We're figuring out how best to handle the financial aspects of my resignation."

"Isn't it a bit early to think of resigning?" Wilson said in his best oncologist's manner.

"Since my time is limited, I'd like to spend as much as possible of it with my daughter. I spoke to Sanford Wells yesterday, hinting at an imminent resignation due to Personal Reasons." She stirred her latte and closed the lid. "He chose to interpret this to mean that I'm leaving because the break-up with House is breaking my heart; I didn't enlighten him. He indicated that he'd be prepared to ease my way out with a generous gratuity for services rendered to the hospital over the years, if ...," Cuddy paused.

"If?"

"... if aforementioned Personal Reason remained at the hospital. In short, he wants to secure House for the hospital."

"That's understandable. House is internationally renowned." Wilson nodded his thanks to the barista handing him his mocha.

"It's damned awkward," Cuddy pointed out. "It means that we need to make House depart of his own volition before I do. I should have thought of this earlier." She chewed her lower lip.

"Umm, you've lost me. Why can't House stay on?" Wilson carefully tore open a sachet of sugar and upended it into his cup.

"Because the moment I'm out the door, my successor will notice that the star of the establishment is not a physician, but merely employed as a consultant with no right to treat patients. How do you intend to explain to my successor and to the board, not to mention to House himself, why he has no licence?" She put in a purely rhetorical pause. "Exactly! And then things will get very unpleasant for everyone involved in Operation House-Deception. You'll all get fired at the best. At the worst you'll be reported to the medical board and your licences will be revoked."

Wilson frowned for a moment. Then he suggested, "Fire him before you leave."

Cuddy huffed impatiently. "What's to stop my successor from trying to hire him right back? Besides, other hospitals are waiting to pounce on him. The moment some dean approaches him with an offer, our little world of make-belief collapses."

"They must be mad. Only you can handle him - he got fired _four _times before you hired him." As though to illustrate his point Wilson picked up another four sachets of sugar. He tore each open exactly parallel to its edge, poured the contents into his cup without spilling a grain, and then folded each empty sachet once before throwing it into the designated container.

Drawing patterns into the sugar she had spilled, Cuddy said with studied casualness, "The problem isn't keeping House under control - I don't even bother. He has a miniscule department, no equipment worth mentioning and no nursing staff at his disposal; he's a mere blip on my budgeting radar and he only treats between fifty and seventy patients a year. How much damage can the man cause? The art lies in controlling the rest of one's staff when one has an anarchist like House setting a bad example: half the other doctors believe they can ignore the rules because House is doing so, and the other half are permanently in my office complaining about House's disregard for rules. 'Handling House' means letting him be himself while concentrating one's efforts on keeping the other staff members toeing the line. That's all there is to it, really."

Leaning with his back against the counter, Wilson had listened to Cuddy's exposition without any comment, but with a slight smile tugging at his lips. Now he took a deliberate sip from his cup, pushed himself off the counter and said, "I don't want the job."

"Sorry?"

"You're prepping me so I can succeed you. Forget it! I'm a good oncologist, I'm a decent department head, but I'm no administrator." He turned deliberately towards the door of the coffee shop in an attempt to close down the route the conversation had taken. "They'll probably get someone from outside anyway."

Cuddy skipped after him. "Yes, they will - they always do, but they'll need an interim dean while they let loose the head hunters."

"Get someone else to do it." It was difficult to escape from Cuddy when one was holding the door for her. Cuddy took advantage of Wilson's dilemma by halting in the doorway.

"It has to be someone who is in the know. That narrows it down to House's team - and you. The board won't accept anyone from the team, so that leaves you." Wilson looked unconvinced, so Cuddy upped the pressure. "The sooner I leave, the better in every respect, but I can't leave unless you take over."

"You're trying to palm the problem of making House leave PPTH off on me," Wilson noted.

"Yes. I _do _so want that golden handshake." Cuddy said, trying for an ironic tone.

Wilson wasn't fooled. "Is money an issue? Because if you're worried about Rachel's future I'd be happy to ..."

Cuddy interrupted quickly, flushing. "Rachel will be fine; I've put aside enough to secure her a good education." She tapped a fingernail against her cup. "It's House I'm worried about. He can't stay on the PPTH payroll much longer, no matter when I leave ...,"

"Look, I'll provide for him. There's no question about that."

"... which means he'll need a private medical insurance. I don't need to point out to you what that'll cost, given his medical history." Both were silent for a moment. "I was going to put something aside for him, but now that my mother has disinherited me ..."

"I thought she was joking."

Having diverted Wilson down her avenue of thought again, Cuddy moved out of the doorway towards her car. "I should be so lucky! No, she's paranoid about me and she's definitely cutting me out of her will. Julia isn't exactly being helpful there - she seems to think that my mother's paranoia isn't without cause."

"What, your sister thinks you're trying to cheat your mother out of her money?"

"No. But she believes I haven't been very tactful about anything lately, thus deliberately provoking my mother's mistrust. She won't see that mom is going downhill fast." Cuddy leaned against her car, twisting a strand of her hair. "There isn't much I can say against that because my brother-in-law is egging her on, and there's no way I'm provoking a marital crisis there. I reckon he figures that if he can delay having my mother incapacitated until I'm well and truly out of the running, then his three children get to benefit. Mom is also suing the hospital - another reason why I should resign as soon as possible. I really don't want to explain to the board why my mother has a totally justified claim against this institution and its staff. She served me the papers yesterday, here at the hospital."

"Ah, yes. Regina told me she set off the fire alarm just to get House and you together again. Sweet." Wilson the Matchmaker smiled at the memory.

"Crap! _I _set off the fire alarm." She laughed at Wilson's incredulous expression. "Honestly, why would anyone install a smoke detector in the janitor's closet? House concocted that charming little tale to save my face in front of all those eagerly eavesdropping nurses, but believe me, my mother is more interested in rubbing my face in my relationship fiascos than in helping me to make a success of them."

"You really should stop smoking, Cuddy," Wilson the Oncologist said.

"I _did _stop - until my mother phoned to say she was dropping by the hospital." Cuddy scrunched up her empty cup and looked around for a bin.

Wilson took the cup from her. "Let's get you some nicotine patches," he suggested.

Cuddy, sliding into the driver's seat, rolled her eyes. "My mother is not a problem that can be solved with three nicotine patches." And with that she slammed the door.

* * *

**XV: The Fix, After Hours**

_Wilson finds the answer to a question he __doesn't ask more illuminating than Nolan's evasions to the questions he does ask._

The sun had set long ago. Wilson sat in the dark stroking Sarah, who was draped across his lap. Finally he heaved a heavy sigh and reached across to the side table on which his hand-set lay. The display lit up, illuminating his face briefly, as he scrolled through his contacts. He hit the dial button.

"Hello?"

Wilson unconsciously squared his shoulders. "Darryl? It's James. James Wilson."

Nolan didn't sound surprised to hear from him despite the late hour. "Hello, James. What can I do for you?"

"It's about House."

"Yes?"

"I'm worried about him."

"That's - good."

Wilson frowned into the darkness. "That's - an odd reply."

"Why?"

"Shouldn't you be asking _why _I'm worried?"

"Okay - why are you worried?" Nolan asked obligingly. Wilson pictured him leaning back and steepling his fingers.

"Did you know that he has relapsed?"

"James, Greg has patient confidentiality." Nolan paused to let that sink in. "Why don't you tell me what's on your mind? If I know, that's fine; if I don't, then that's even better."

"Okay." It wasn't as though Wilson had much of a choice. He plunged right into the heart of the matter, hoping that his disclosures would shock Nolan into something more revealing than his standard blocks and feints. "Last week, House was admitted to Princeton General after trying to do surgery on himself. He was removing tumours from his leg in his bathroom."

Nolan remained silent.

"He'd caused the tumours himself by taking an experimental drug that was supposed to stimulate muscle growth. He stole it from a research project at PPTH where it's being tested on rats."

"He told you that?" Nolan sounded mildly surprised.

"No. I figured that he must be on something stronger than vicodin, because ... well, anyway, so I asked one of his team to ... make discreet enquiries." That didn't sound as suave as Wilson wished.

"What did he say when you confronted him with your information? Because I'm assuming you talked to him about the dangers of trying out experimental drugs."

Wilson asked himself whether Nolan had ever tried to broach topics House didn't want to talk about. Of course he had - he was House's therapist, after all. But then, Nolan wasn't the one who had to deal with House in Real Life; no, he was safe in his sterile environment where people who broke the rules got put into solitary confinement. But there was no use in meditating on their respective access to instruments of torture when dealing with House - he wanted something from Nolan, not vice versa.

He took a deep breath. "No, not really. The thing is, House knew long before he started injecting himself that the drug - it's called CS 804 - not only stimulates muscle growth, but also causes tumours. The head of the project, Riggin, came to me for advice when his rats started dying. House was with me and he made stupid jokes about the most expensive rat poison in history. That was about half-a-year ago. Ergo, he _knew _that the drug caused cancer when he started injecting himself with it some weeks ago."

"But those drug trials were still continuing?"

"Well, yes." This was truly a bit awkward. Wilson drew the hand dedicated to massaging Sarah's back through his hair. When Sarah made a mewling sound of disapproval, Wilson hurriedly returned the hand to her spine. "Riggin had money to conduct the trials for another six months, which was the time span the trials would have taken if the rats hadn't gotten terminally ill, so he just kept testing on new rats. If he'd published his results at that point, funding would have ceased. Riggin has tenure, but the other members of his research team are on short-term contracts. Had he let his sponsor know that the trials have failed, they'd all have been out of a job."

"So you knew House was injecting himself with a potentially lethal drug, but you saw no reason to interfere because House was well acquainted with the dangers of what he was doing," Nolan stated baldly.

When Nolan phrased it like that, it did sound rather callous.

"No! No," Wilson protested. He hastened to explain, "When Thirteen, sorry, Dr Hadley, told me that House was injecting himself with CS 804, I figured that he must be messing around with her - and by extension with me -, because no matter how desperate he was, it didn't seem likely that House would be so insane as to try out a drug that had proven to be 100% fatal in a trial. I came to the conclusion that he was shooting up heroin or morphine, and trying to hide it from Cuddy by telling Dr Hadley it was CS 804. You see, Cuddy had also talked Dr Hadley into checking on House, and neither she nor Dr Hadley knew of the negative trial results … yet. Riggin kept them from Cuddy for the same reason he kept them from the sponsors. As a result House's story - that he was trying to grow muscle tissue with the help of CS 804 - seemed credible to them."

"But not to you. So what did you do?"

"I tried to talk to him about pain management. He," Wilson winced at the memory, "smashed some stuff in my office. That sort of killed off the conversation. And then he carved himself up before I could do anything."

"And now you'd like my advice on what to do."

Wilson's voice rose involuntarily, making Sarah complain once again. "I want you to _do _something about House! This can't continue. He almost killed himself, first with CS 804, then by operating on himself. He could have gone into shock and died right there!"

"I can only do something about Greg if he comes to me asking for help. He's a free man; I can't force him to do anything."

"Can't we get him committed or something?" Wilson suggested with a hint of desperation.

"On what grounds?"

"Attempted suicide?"

"If you thought he was trying to commit suicide, you would have put him on psych watch straightaway," Nolan said reasonably.

"Temporary insanity, then. House must have lost his mind, or his memory, to take a drug like that. He _knew _he'd get tumours from it."

"Have you had an open talk with Greg about this? About his mental state?"

Wilson tried to picture an 'open talk' with House - one in which House expressed to Wilson his worries about his sanity - and failed miserably. "I told you, he hasn't exactly been patient lately," he said somewhat tartly. "I'd prefer not to lose more of my property to his acts of violence."

"And before this?" Nolan pried. "You're hardly calling me to have him declared incapacitated or committed because of one isolated incident that is admittedly worrying, but only barely outside the range of harm that Greg inflicts on himself on a regular basis. You're convinced that he's permanently compromised."

"It's difficult to talk to someone about their mental state if they aren't ... don't ... have no idea what their mental state is."

"Have you ever tried?" Nolan asked. Wilson wondered whether Mayfield was the epicentre of some alternate universe in which House listened to well-meant advice. "No? Well, James, as you say, something has to change. I suggest that you and Greg have an open, honest talk, one that not only covers the incidents of the past week, but also the developments of the past two years or so. And try not to make any assumptions. Go into the talk with an open mind."

"Sorry?" This was ... ridiculous! _He _wasn't the one who sabotaged all attempts at communication by pretending that everything was fine or went around smashing stuff with his cane!

"You assumed he was taking heroin or morphine when you tried to talk to him about pain management. It seems he wasn't."

"No, but CS 804 is no better. In fact, I'd say it's worse, all risks considered - it's suicidal! If that's the way he intends to approach pain management ..."

"See, you're making assumptions again. What if this wasn't about pain management?"

"What else could it be?"

"I have no idea. But I wouldn't jump to any conclusions until I hear what Greg has to say. What does Dr Cuddy think? Is she also in favour of his being committed?"

"I haven't discussed this with her," Wilson admitted. "She doesn't know that House was aware of the carcinogenic properties of CS 804 when he started taking it, so she's upset, but not unduly worried. She isn't aware of the full insanity of his actions."

"Don't you usually consult with Dr Cuddy over major decisions like these?"

"She's - got a lot on her plate at the moment, and I didn't want to upset her any further." That wasn't the whole truth; the fact was that Cuddy had always tended to rosy-hued optimism where House was concerned, and the direr her own predicament, the less likely she was to give House's matters the consideration they deserved. The way she'd dumped House was just one example that proved his theory - it was difficult to envision House spiralling more out of control that he had done already, even if he was forced to watch Cuddy die. Wilson settled for, "I'm pretty sure, however, that it would take a load off her mind to know House safe in Mayfield." That, at least, was true.

"Ah, yes, I understand. Yes, it's very tragic."

Wilson was about to quote his standard reply that given the improvements in cancer treatment during the last decade there was always hope, blah-blah, when realization hit him. "Wait - how do you know about Cuddy's cancer? No one knows, except for ... oh, crap! Crap!" And forgetting his manners, Wilson disconnected the call without wishing Nolan a good night.


	5. Chapter 5

**A/N: **We come to the end of the ride. I thank everyone who came along. If you've been reading, but not reviewing**, I'd be happy if you dropped just one line saying you read it**. It's been a lot of work, and it would be nice to know that at least a handful of people profited from it in some way.

The ending is perilously close to crack fic. My sincerest apologies, but what the show gave me to work with is hardly to be squeezed into a credible plot line. This was the best I could come up with.

Again, many thanks to **Brighid45** and to **Flywoman_Returns** for their help and encouragement. Without them, this story would never have got written.

* * *

**XVI: Moving On**

_**Guest Star: Gregory House (formerly MD, now PDV [Perpetrator of Domestic Violence])**_

_The Final Chapter,__ that circles around until all loose ends are tied up firmly in a Gordian knot, swerves off to reveal the true nature of our hero's delusions, takes a quick detour into the physics of car crashes, picks up every known cliché on the way, and ultimately parks itself right in the middle of Certain People's opinions on physical altercations of a domestic nature._

Wilson had been trying to intercept Cuddy all day. He finally caught up with her when she exited the elevator in the lobby, a stack of papers in her hands.

"Have you seen House?" he asked.

Cuddy strode towards the clinic. "Yes. He finally talked to me."

"What did he say?"

"That he feels hurt," Cuddy said shortly.

"That's all?"

Cuddy stopped short. "This is _House_ we're talking about. What did you expect?"

"He knows something. We need to talk to him. About everything."

Cuddy snorted and started off again. "Him admitting that he's hurting is as good as it's going to get. He'd rather pull all his stitches leading me a merry dance around the hospital than spend five minutes in my presence. He fled the ICU, and left me standing in the corridor outside the cafeteria."

"Maybe the hospital isn't the best place for a real talk. Invite him to your place," Wilson suggested, following her through the clinic doors.

Cuddy swung round to face him, lowering her voice and walking half backwards. "Wilson, I haven't got the time for this. Sanford Wells has approached HR asking for details of House's contract. Apparently he's worried that once I'm gone, other hospitals will start circling House like vultures, so he wants to up House's salary and benefits to counter potential offers. HR told him that they had an IT problem and couldn't access the data, then they informed me. I can keep Sanford at bay for a few days, but this time next week he'll know that House is not a doctor at PPTH any longer. My time has run out. I'll be fired and the board will sue me."

Wilson gaped. "Surely he won't ..."

"He will! Sanford is a nice guy, but first and foremost he's a businessman. If this comes out, we'll face a mass of litigations. Sanford will want to ensure that it's clear to all, especially to ex-patients of House's, that I alone am culpable and that the hospital holds no responsibility."

"All the more reason to talk to House," Wilson insisted, managing to insert himself between Cuddy and the door to her office.

"Not today," Cuddy decreed.

Wilson refused to budge.

"Today, I need to talk to my banker and to my sister."

Wilson's face was a polite question mark.

Cuddy gave a very exasperated huff. "I have a daughter. A daughter who will be a destitute orphan, the way things are going. My mother has disinherited me; the board will fire me and sue me until my last cent is gone. When I die, my daughter will be dependent on the charity of her aunt and uncle, unless I manage to put some money aside before the hospital bleeds me. Yes, it would be _wonderful_ if House and I could clear the air before the thunderstorm breaks, but right now Rachel's future is my top priority."

"When are you meeting up with your sister?" Wilson persisted.

"Jerry, Julia and Josh are coming to my place for dinner."

"Jerry?"

"My banker. I'm hoping he can tell us how I can transfer a load of assets from my name onto Julia's without breaking too many laws."

"Then we'll talk to House afterwards. I'll bring him over."

"Whatever." Cuddy shrugged in a 'couldn't-care-less' manner and stepped past Wilson into her office.

* * *

House's car and his bike were outside his apartment in Baker Street. After parking his car behind House's, Wilson went inside and knocked on House's door.

"You know where the key is," House yelled from inside.

Wilson glanced around to make sure no one was watching before he took the key from the top of the door frame and let himself in. House wasn't on his couch and the television was off. The apartment was weirdly silent. Filled with a dark premonition Wilson advanced far enough to be able to view the entire living area.

House was sitting at his desk in front of his laptop, surrounded by a clutter of papers. Wilson started breathing again. "What if I'd been the pizza delivery guy?" he said with a sharpness born of relief.

House didn't glance up from his scribbling. "He also knows where the key is."

Wilson moved behind House and peered over his shoulder. The papers in front of him were covered with numbers and formulas. A few of them struck faint chords in Wilson's memory of loathsome physics lessons in high school. "What are you doing? Momentum? Velocity?"

House draped an arm over the papers so that most of what he had written was covered up. The screen of the laptop, however, showed a frontal car crash. Wilson looked at it pointedly. "My new career: crash test dummy," House said casually. "How much does a car weigh?"

"No idea. About a ton?"

"We'll go with that." House scribbled a last number onto the top paper in his pile and let the air out of his cheeks in satisfied little pops. He swept the pile into the bin, slammed the lid of the laptop shut and rose. "Okay, let's pack."

He stumped into his bedroom, not bothering to check whether Wilson was following him. There he drew out a small suitcase from under his bed, the same one he'd taken to Mayfield two years ago. After throwing it on the bed and opening it, he went over to his wardrobe. An assortment of clothes sailed onto the bed.

Wilson automatically started folding them together and placing them in the suitcase. When a short-sleeved yellow shirt with a palm-tree print landed in front of him, he stopped short. "Where are you going?"

"To Goa." At Wilson's look of disbelief House said defensively, "Hey, you're the one who said something has to change. I'm going to the beach," a pair of flip-flops landed in the suitcase, "relaxing," _Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince _ricocheted off the bed's headboard and joined the flip-flops, "sipping cocktails in the sun." A bottle of sunscreen hit Wilson's shoulder. "Dominika's there already - she has booked a cottage by the beach."

As though jolted awake, Wilson remembered why he was here. He pointed an accusing finger at House. "You _know_. I know that you know."

House stopped what he was doing to muster Wilson, his head tipped to one side. Then he said lightly, "Okay. I know that you know that I know. Your turn."

Wilson's outstretched finger was now shaking. "You know that Cuddy has cancer."

House's eyes slid away. "Yes."

"How?"

"She wouldn't have broken up with me if she'd been healthy," House explained as though stating the obvious, turning back to the contents of his wardrobe.

Wilson loyally rose to Cuddy's defence. "You weren't there when she needed you; you came to her bedside stoned! Even if she was healthy, she'd have a right to expect more of her boyfriend."

"I wasn't her boyfriend. I'm the fragile nutter she was babysitting so that he didn't have to be committed. If she was healthy, there'd be all the more reason to keep an eye on me after my slip-up with the vicodin. She dumped me instead, risking a full-blown relapse, which means that her own problems superseded her need to protect me." House gave Wilson a _quod-erat-demonstrandum _look as he placed a pile of T-shirts into the suitcase.

The puzzlement in Wilson's face gave way to growing comprehension. He gaped speechlessly, his hands balled to fists.

House huffed in annoyance. "You morons! Did you really believe I wouldn't notice that my balls were turning blue?"

Wilson found his voice again. "It seemed more likely than the alternative - that you were espousing the ideal of platonic friendship."

House shrugged. "One grabs what one can get. Cuddy cooked for me, played Savagescape with me, watched crappy movies with me and felt guilty enough to let me grope her every now and then."

Deliberately ignoring the veiled accusation behind House's words, Wilson returned to his original agenda. "Okay, so you aren't on a bender because your girlfriend tossed you out; you're on a bender because Cuddy's dying." When House snorted in amusement, Wilson's voice rose. "House, we need to talk about this."

"I am _not _on a bender. Give a guy who, for nine whole months, was only allowed to look but not to touch, a break. So, I spent a few days with hookers and some recreational drugs. But after that I got to work."

"The word 'work' implies a productive or creative process. You," Wilson pointed his finger again, "married a hooker and maimed your leg. Is this your new career as a performance artist?"

"I made a business contract with a nurse and carried out a pre-clinical study on an innovative drug," House corrected wearily, taking a few documents out of his bedside drawer and placing them in a zip pocket of the suitcase.

"House, you took a _lethal _drug! I know you're in pain, ..."

"Really?" House swung around to face Wilson.

" ... but that isn't pain management. That's suicide!"

"I wasn't talking about CS 804." House scanned the bookshelf over his bed, reaching out to take a medical journal down. He thrust the journal at Wilson after opening it to a page that showed heavy underlining and text marking. "Here - _you_ should know all about it. I borrowed this journal from your office."

"You took my edition of 'Anti-Cancer Drug Design'?" When House didn't deign to answer, Wilson looked at the article House had marked so heavily. "Sharma Pharmaceuticals' new cancer drug?" he said somewhat sceptically. "Their early clinical trials in India seem quite promising, but heaven knows how reliable the data is."

"Are you prejudiced against the scientific standards in up-and-coming Asian countries?" House baited.

"I know a doctor whose opinion of colleagues who publish in Indian medical journals is scathing, to put it mildly."

House's face took on a saintly look. "It's never too late to recognize the error of one's ways."

"The last I heard, _Tenogrin _hadn't been approved for clinical trials in the US," Wilson said unenthusiastically.

"Thanks to the might of our own pharmaceutical lobby."

"That may well be, but in the meantime... ." Wilson narrowed his eyes. "Hang on, are you saying you tried it out?"

"Yep."

Wilson wavered between horror and incredulity. "You got tumours from a cancer drug?"

House rolled his eyes and said slowly, as though explaining the art of lying to Masters, "If you want to test a cancer drug, you need to have cancer. I took CS 804 to _induce _tumours, which I then _combatted _with _Tenogrin_."

"You nearly killed yourself proving that the FDA is right to refuse clinical tests. Oh, well done, House!" Wilson slammed the journal down on the bed and paced the room.

"She's dying, damn you! Someone has to do something!"

"You playing Romeo to her Juliet is not going to help her! Grow up, House! She isn't one of your zebras. She's got booooring cancer, sooner or later she'll die, and your theatrics aren't helping her one bit!"

"They are. _Tenogrin _works," House said with utter sincerity.

"As is proven by the tumours that you had to excise," Wilson couldn't help pointing out.

"They were double the size when I started taking _Tenogrin_. They shrank."

Wilson folded his arms over his chest. "Right. And the chainsaw massacre in your bathroom was supplementary treatment."

House scratched an eyebrow with his thumb, avoiding Wilson's eyes. "I was kinda in a hurry - didn't want Cuddy dying before I bag the Nobel Prize for Medicine and shame her for all her nagging - so I may have been a bit generous when calculating my CS 804 dosage. I ended up with vicious bastards of tumours." Exuding optimism he continued, "Now Cuddy's tumours, they're your classic mobbing victim type - they'll hang around in their corner just begging to be clobbered on the nose by big bad chemo bully. This stuff will work on her."

"Let the oncologist judge that. There's no way Cuddy will try an untested drug just because you only lost _one _of your nine lives instead of all of them." The way House left this uncommented and returned to his packing got Wilson's attention. "Oh, no, no! You're not repeating the experiment! House!" he yelled after him as House disappeared into his bathroom.

"Don't get your thongs all in a twist," House called from the bathroom. "The Indian government has just announced that it is sponsoring a large-scale clinical trial in Pune."

"I repeat: she won't try it at this stage, and even if she would, they won't take her. Clinical trials take stage III patients at the best. Her tumour has metastasized; she's stage IV."

House reappeared with a few sanitary items. "And if the trial proves that the stuff works? She'd owe it to Rachel to try it."

"It'll take years until they have results. She'll be dead by then."

"There'll be preliminary results in less than six months."

"Which won't be worth the paper of the journal they're published in. The people in charge of such trials will publish anything they like as long as their case numbers are so small that they are of no statistical value."

"Why do you have to negate everything?" House asked, trying to look aggrieved.

"This is exactly what Cuddy will say when you propose your plan to her," Wilson pointed out patiently.

"There's a fool-proof way of finding out whether the preliminary results are kosher or not: analysing all the data on which they are based."

"That's why you're going to India," Wilson said resignedly.

"Pune's not that far from Goa. I can drop in on the way."

"House, if you're caught breaking and entering over there, I won't come and bail you out. Do you have any idea what Indian jails are like?"

House made a kicked puppy-dog face at Wilson. "Are you accusing me of criminal intentions? I'm hurt."

Wilson sought refuge in heavy sarcasm. "You'll walk in there and say, '_Hi, I'm Greg House. I'd like to see all your lab and patient data_,' and of course they'll hand everything over to you."

Tipping his head, House pretended to think about this for a moment. "Actually, yes. Though I might be more specific. Like, '_I'm Greg House, the Government of India's official liaison with Sharma Pharmaceuticals for the Tenogrin clinical trial the government is financing for you, and this is Dr James Wilson, world-renowned oncologist and specialist for cryotherapy, who will supervise the clinical trial for you_.' See, the Indian government is only sponsoring the trials because _our _names will give the results the necessary weight on the world market."

"The Indian government will never ... shit, you've already got the contracts, haven't you?"

"I signed mine a week ago." House took a manila envelope that he'd slid into the suitcase's zip pocket just moments earlier out again and withdrew a document from inside it. He slid it over to Wilson. "Sign here!"

Wilson started reading through the contract, his hand already going to the pens in his shirt pocket, but after half-a-page he shook his head. "I can't do this. This could be a total scam. I'll ruin my professional reputation if that stuff turns out to be some Ayurvedic herbal remedy." He pinched the bridge of his nose nervously.

House said very deliberately, "It'll also ruin your professional reputation if we don't get the hell out of Dodge before Sanford Wells discovers that I'm not a board-licensed physician." Wilson's features went rigid with shock. House gave him a curt nod "You owe me." Wilson flushed, and then broke eye contact. Using the wall as a prop, he signed on the last page without reading through the remaining pages. House took it from him and threw it carelessly on top of his packed suitcase "Right," he said, slamming the suitcase shut.

Wilson said tentatively, "You ... wanna talk about it?"

House turned to Wilson, looming over him. "What shall we talk about? That two people who call themselves my friends colluded to keep some very basic facts about my life from me? That my bestest buddy, who always talks about trust, leaps of faith and openness, has been lying to me ever since I got out of Mayfield? That my boss is using my medical abilities under false pretences?"

"House, that's not how ... we were worried... it was for your own good," Wilson stuttered, backing away.

"Don't. Ever. Dare. To decide what's good for me!"

"We wanted to help ..." Wilson's voice faded in the face of House's wilting stare. "I'm sorry," he said quietly.

House shut his eyes. When he opened them a moment later, the anger had burned away. "I'm aware that neither of you intended to incapacitate or defraud me, which is why I'm helping both of you to get out of that tight corner that you've painted yourselves into." He picked up the suitcase and went back into the living room, where he unhooked his laptop from the power supply and slid it into his backpack. He took a wad of cash from a drawer and his passport from another. Then he opened the closet and stared at the pairs of trainers lined up inside.

After observing him silently for some minutes Wilson asked, "Umm, if you aren't delusional, why exactly _are _we in this tight corner? Why don't you try to get your licence back?"

House said rather theatrically, "Who says I'm not delusional? I don't do delusions on demand, that's all." He picked a pair of light canvas trainers right from the back of the closet and limped over to the couch with them. Wilson followed him, tight-lipped. House looked up, sighing when he saw Wilson's determined mien. He spoke as though talking about a third person, "Mild schizophrenia, onset in early adulthood, major psychotic break two years ago due to substance abuse, responds well to medication, no psychotic breaks in the past nine months. I'm fine. Another three months, and Nolan will advocate reinstating my licence."

"Nine months," Wilson echoed hollowly.

"Give or take."

"And before that?"

"Slight problems adjusting my medication at the beginning, and a bit of a rough patch when I tried reducing my medication a year ago," House said with studied casualness, "but other than that ..."

"So you've basically been messing with our heads for two years," Wilson summarized.

House pretended to consider this. "Basically - yes."

"You knew you weren't head of diagnostics any longer," Wilson stated as much as surmised.

"Since I had no licence - yes."

"That you weren't dating Cuddy."

"Ye-es."

Wilson instantly latched onto the hesitation in House's voice. "'Ye-es' as in 'Definitely' or as in 'Well, not really'?"

House grimaced slightly. "Told you: slight medication slip-up around that time, so _maybe_ I was confused for a moment when she turned up at my apartment in the middle of the night. But when I woke up in the morning and couldn't even remember hallucinated sex, let alone the real stuff, had a fuzzy taste in my mouth, a poop machine in my living-room and an oncologist stuck in my kitchen window, I figured that I wasn't getting no satisfaction."

"What about Sam and me?" Wilson asked with growing trepidation.

Now House grinned evilly. "When you friended her on Facebook, I friended her too. She was very interested in hearing how you proposed to me, and wished both of us well. She said she'd always sensed a 'feminine' side in you."

Wilson shook his head in frustration. "No wonder she called off our dinner date. Why couldn't you leave well alone?"

House stood up with his hand on his heart and the falsest look of devotion on his face. "How could I give you up when you'd only just declared your undying love for me - in front of Nora?"

"You vindictive bastard," Wilson said without much heat.

"Says the meddlesome ass. Let's go." Giving Wilson a calculating look, he disappeared into the bathroom, then reappeared with a hairbrush. Wilson frowned, looking from the hairbrush to House's sparse, neglected hair. "Gotta return this to Cuddy," House explained, tossing the hairbrush into his backpack. He picked it up and gestured to Wilson to take the suitcase.

Wilson obediently grabbed the suitcase and followed House out of the apartment. When he caught up with him at the curb, he asked with an air of grievance, "Is there anything these past two years that you _did _hallucinate?"

"Well, that's kinda tricky," House said, pursing his lips. "If I could tell the difference between hallucinations and reality, I wouldn't be classified as a nutter." He held out his free hand. "Give me your car keys."

"You're not driving my car."

"Not now. Later. I'll need your car to get to the airport."

"Why can't you take yours?" Wilson asked reasonably.

"We're leaving that at Cuddy's place," House said, as though that explained everything. "I'll take a cab back here. Stop asking questions already!" Wilson reluctantly placed his keys in House's palm. House opened the boot, took the suitcase from Wilson and flung it inside. Slamming the boot shut, he locked the car and pocketed the keys. Then he limped over to his car and got in. Wilson sighed and followed.

At the first red light Wilson, who had been uncharacteristically silent, turned to House. "Chase and Cameron?"

House didn't pretend not to understand. "Divorced," he stated.

Wilson's tone screamed _'gotcha_!' as he said, "They were never married."

"Oh." House frowned and bit his lip. Then he said cheerily, "Sensible girl. Why throw herself away on Chase while I'm around needing fixing?"

"Sensible _guy_," Wilson corrected. "Cameron would have been happy to have him, but he decided that he preferred indulging his sex addiction to being fixed by Cameron and living chastely ever after." As the traffic light turned green Wilson said, "Then you _were _hallucinating when you got out of Mayfield."

"That's what I said," House said tersely, closing the topic.

Two traffic lights on, Wilson started off again, "Cuddy and Lucas?"

"Cuddy'd never date _that_."

"God, she'll be pissed to hear that you knew all along," Wilson said, sounding not at all sorry for Cuddy. "She was dead embarrassed to have to pretend to be dating him in front of the whole hospital."

House's cheek muscle twitched in a reluctant grimace of admission. "Thought they were dating - till I broke into Lucas's place at Thanksgiving. My memories of him were a lot more flattering than the banal reality that he's probably the worst PI in New Jersey and a complete turn-off."

"Believe you me, she'll trim your testicles for putting her through that." There was an unmistakeable hint of _schadenfreude _in Wilson's mien.

"You'd like that, huh? You can always donate one of yours to me - you enjoy giving bits of yourself to needy friends."

It took Wilson a few moments to decipher that, but then he flushed guiltily. "My liver is intact," he admitted. With a side glance at House he added, "And yours would be fine if you'd stop bombarding it with rat poison and experimental drugs."

"Why did I hope that you'd stop lecturing me once I explained my excellent reasons for acting as I did?"

But Wilson was firmly ensconced in worrying mode. "We don't know anything about the long-term effects of CS 804. You realize that you can get new tumours any time."

"Or grow new leg muscle. I'm fine!" House reiterated.

"Yeah. If you were that optimistic, you wouldn't have married Dominika. You wanted a trained nurse around in case anything went wrong." House was silent, staring straight ahead at the road. "You couldn't just have hired her?" Wilson asked wearily.

House drew up at the curb in front of Cuddy's house, but remained seated. "And with what would I have paid her, if the deal with the Indian government hadn't worked out? The hospital can't keep me once Cuddy is gone and it is revealed that I don't have a licence, not even as a consultant, or whatever it is that Cuddy has disguised me as. I'm sure that what I've been doing - pretending to be a board-licenced physician - is a criminal offence." He leaned over Wilson to open the glove compartment. "Here - plane tickets to India for Cuddy, the squirt and you. You should both resign as soon as possible and head out there."

Wilson eyed the tickets without taking them, then he looked at House. "Cuddy will never come out there. Not with Rachel."

House dropped the tickets in Wilson's lap. "I'm also pretty sure that aiding and abetting me in my criminal deeds - one might even say 'instigating' them - is a criminal offence too. We don't have an extradition agreement with India, so unless Cuddy is convinced that she can figure out a scheme to cover up her criminal activities, she had better think about this. Cuddy can hang out on the beach in Goa, or come along with us to Pune and play watchdog over the trials, as she pleases. You'll keep her alive and Dominika will look after her while she decides whether she'll risk _Tenogrin _or not."

"And after that? I mean, if we can't come back here because the police is looking for us ..."

"You've avoided Louisiana for half your life. You'll just have to avoid the other 49 states for the rest of it."

Fingering the tickets, Wilson said rather desperately, "Aren't you going to explain all this to Cuddy?"

"And have her bite my head off when she finds out that I knew she wasn't dating Lucas? The guy blackmailed her - she'll be _really _pissed at me, and she's no fun when she's pissed."

"That won't be the only reason she'll be pissed," Wilson predicted darkly.

"See? My point. Besides," House glanced at his watch and leaned back to his backpack to withdraw Cuddy's hairbrush from it, "I have a flight to catch. Wait here!" He got out of the car and slammed the door.

"House!"

But House ignored him. He walked up to the house, but instead of ringing the door bell, he moved over to peer into the dining room window. What he saw must have displeased him, for he came back and slid into the car frowning in thought. "She's at home," he remarked.

"Well, yes. Didn't you come here to return the brush?"

"Would I drive all the way here because of a brush that she replaced months ago?" House tossed the brush over his shoulder onto the back seat, saying, "I took the brush along so you wouldn't pester me the whole way asking why we were coming here when Cuddy isn't at home. Except that she _is _at home. Doesn't she normally meet with Finances on the third Monday of the month?"

"She cancelled it. She's meeting up with her banker and her sister."

Deep in thought, House tapped a tattoo on the steering wheel. Then he said tensely, "Get out."

"What?"

"You heard me - get out!" When Wilson still didn't move House turned to him and unfastened his seat belt for him. "Look, _I _don't mind hanging out in India smoking weed for the rest of my life, but let's assume that either of you ever wants to return here. That will only work if Cuddy manages to glue my personnel file shut so tight that no one will be able to pry it open again. Which means that I need to give her a reason for firing me that won't allow the board to touch me with a ten-foot pole afterwards: domestic violence. I'm going to drive the car into her house. Bit of a bummer that she's at home, but they just left the front room."

Wilson's jaw went slack. "That's - insane!"

"I worked it all out - you saw it. Cars are constructed in such a way that in the case of a frontal crash, the hood absorbs the momentum. At twenty-five mph the hood of the car will fold and some of her windows might break, but that's about it."

Wilson slammed his hands onto the dashboard. "House, I'm not letting you commit suicide."

"Don't you trust me?"

"No."

"Then all the more reason to get out. The driver is protected by the steering wheel, the person in the passenger's seat isn't. Besides, they've just left the dining room in the direction of the kitchen. I need you to give me a signal in case they come back." Wilson stared straight ahead, his mouth set in a straight line. House's mouth twitched provocatively. "Or do you want to risk me crashing into a populated dining-room? No?" He reached over to open Wilson's door and gave Wilson a little push. "Then go!"

_Ten minutes, one shattered house wall and one broken wrist later:_

Wilson picked himself up in time to see House emerge from the new entrance to Cuddy's dining room. When House came to a halt next to him, he spluttered, " '_No one will get hurt_.' Why did I believe you? Why didn't I ring the doorbell and warn them?"

"No one _got _hurt, okay?" House snapped. When Wilson mutely held out his wrist, House probed it somewhat more roughly than was necessary. "It's sprained - don't whine." He turned away and limped along the sidewalk.

Wilson stared in disbelief, and then he skipped awkwardly after him, his face contorted with pain and fury. " _'I worked it all out: The hood will fold and some of the windows might break.'_ You - you think you're always right! You'll spend the rest of your life in jail!"

"I calculated the crash for twenty-five mph, not for forty," House tossed over his shoulder.

"Then why the hell were you going forty?"

House slowed down, giving Wilson a chance to catch up. "I wanted it to look authentic in case there were any witnesses, so I went in fast, intending to slow down to twenty-five just before I hit the house. Thing is, you need traction if you want to brake. When the car hit the curb, it jumped into the air. No contact with the ground means no traction. By the time it was on the ground again, it was too late to brake." House shrugged the matter away. "Cuddy doesn't need the house anymore." He pulled out his cell phone. "Hello? I need a cab at the corner of Monroe and Randall. Tell the driver to look out for a cripple with a cane."

"What about me?" Wilson asked forlornly, gazing back at the shambles that was Cuddy's house.

"Buy me some time - my flight only leaves in five hours. And persuade Cuddy not to press charges. I'd like my licence back some day, and a criminal record won't help."

"You'll never get your licence back. Not after this."

"Oh, you'd be surprised. Got the idea for this little bout of domestic violence from a report about a guy who killed his ex by driving his SUV into her house. His lawyer claimed that seeing her with her new boyfriend set his client off, that she'd been lying to him, and that his violence wasn't aimed against her, but against her property. She was just collateral damage. It worked: he got the jury behind him and his client was acquitted. People interviewed outside the courtroom said the woman got what she deserved because she'd driven her ex to it - no pun intended."

"That lawyer sounds like the right guy for _you_, then," Wilson said, oozing disapproval.

A cab drew up at the curb.

"Hey, there's an idea. Beach, the guy was called. Or Coast? I'll google him." He got into the cab. "Baker Street," he said to the cab driver, then he poked his head out again at Wilson. "Hey, got any cash?" Wilson got his wallet out and opened it awkwardly with one hand. House leaned right out and pulled a few bills out of the wallet. "Shore," he said meditatively, "David Shore. I'll leave your car keys at the United Airlines desk at Newark. If the police ask, tell them I stole the keys. See y'all in Goa." He leaned back, smiling happily, as the cab accelerated down the street.

THE END

* * *

**A/N**: In case anyone thinks I'm basely attributing thoughts or opinions to David Shore or to his team that they never had, here come a few quotes to clarify issues of attribution, libel, etc.

David Shore on House in 'Moving On':

_I don't think he wanted to kill anybody. But who knows? Probably part of his mind __did__. It was a lashing out — a very __extreme __lashing out. I don't think it was a murderous lashing out._

_[…] she put his hand on [the new boyfriend's] arm, which was part of the whole thing that set him off. The car was aimed at the house, not at the individuals inside._

[Source: tvline-dot-com/2011/05/house-finale-post-mortem-season-7-spoilers/]

Peter Blake on House in 'Moving On':

_He had asked her, "Are you dating anyone?" She had said, "No." And then it seemed to him—although she wasn't lying—it seemed to him that she had been lying to him about all of it because she seemed to be with this new guy having this romantic dinner with the family. So he felt hurt about that.__ […] And he lets out his anger. And then in a weird way he feels better._  
[Source: blogcritics-dot-org/video/article/digging-into-the-house-season-finale1/page-4/#ixzz1U47Lkcwc]

I have also read a number of fan opinions to the effect that Cuddy and Wilson got what they deserved for nagging and pushing House where he didn't want to go, and that by telling him to get angry and let his feelings out they were asking for it. So, I'd say Shore has at least part of the jury behind him.


End file.
